art esprit

What came first, the chicken or the pear?
Cynthia Fontneau has been exhausting her passion for painting - with chickens and fowl of all sorts for about 18months now. It all started with a dream. She had a dream about some rather abstract chickens hovering around her backyard. They were red and vibrant in her dreams and she had to get them onto canvas. (See how it all began below). This little chick (about 10 by 14 inches) was painted in layers of acrylic glazed deeply with color. Fresh paint! Fresh chick! Fresh pears! Not your ordinary compostion of pears and what have you. Her work is so portrait like with these birds that they could hardly be called anything but portraits. The images are alive with personality, dare we say they have attitude? They are fine paintings. Yes, they are not your trendy folk art chicken prints for the kitchen. These proud birds beg you to speak with them. Look closely, doesn't that one with the fluffy topknot remind you of one of the queens from a small European country you studied in fifth grade? She certainly outclasses her mate in every way. They make you look at the world of fowl so differently, that each painting and wood cut print she creates brings something new to the plate. Ooops! I do not mean for dinner ... hang one of these on your wall - ok - in the kitchen if you must, and enjoy the wit and wisdom of the not so lowly bird. These are truly beautifully executed paintings of chickens. One of a kind. Just like people. They are priced around $200 and below and most are framed. Cynthia's flock can be seen at artstreamstudios.com and she also has some woodcut prints over in South Berwick, ME at Emporium Gallery. Go ahead take a peck ... umm, peek. We always have a few of her birds on hand. Which is far better than the bush. Any Bush I can think of.














The word for the day is ... Plucky ... as in fortitude, imaginative and fearless