Blue Perched in the Kruger

Oil on canvas | 45cm × 35cm | 2025 

Some paintings begin with a subject. This one began with a photograph my father took.

Early in 2025 we visited the Kruger National Park together, a trip that turned unexpectedly into something of a birding adventure. Where we’d usually be scanning the bush for the big five, we found ourselves slowing down, watching, and discovering that some of the most extraordinary creatures in the Kruger have feathers. This European Roller stopped us completely. My father, who is a gifted photographer, caught him in perfect light on a weathered branch, and when I saw the image I knew immediately I had to paint it.

What drew me in was the feathers, that extraordinary layering of teal, turquoise, cobalt and chestnut, each one delicate and precise. Capturing that quality in oil, rendering something that reads as genuinely soft and light-filled rather than flat or mechanical, was the challenge I set myself. The talons gripping the dry branch, the alert turn of the head, the wet gleam of the eye. I wanted every detail to feel observed and alive.

There was something else too. As a child I spent years painting, drawing and sculpting birds, it was a quiet fixation I carried for a long time before life took me elsewhere. Sitting down with this painting felt strangely familiar, like returning to something I’d left behind without meaning to.

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