Untitled - Budgie (2023)

This small painting began as an observational study rather than a portrait, focusing on the formal relationship between colour, light, and texture. The budgie’s delicate posture and vibrant plumage provided a natural framework to explore luminosity — how light behaves across feathers, and how warmth and coolness can coexist within a single surface.

Unlike my companion and memorial pieces, this work carries no specific narrative. Its simplicity becomes its strength: a reflection on the painter’s gaze itself. The subject is not idealised but studied with care, suspended in a still moment that feels both intimate and detached. The dark backdrop isolates the figure, allowing the bright yellows and turquoise tones to radiate softly outward, almost as if light were being generated from within.

In painting it, I was interested in the act of quiet observation — the meditative patience required to translate life into form. What remains is less about the bird itself than about the space between seeing and understanding, where colour becomes emotion in its most distilled form.

Painted digitally with broad, opaque strokes layered over a soft underglaze, Untitled (Budgie) employs a limited complementary palette of citron yellow, turquoise, and violet-grey. High-contrast lighting establishes depth against the neutral background, while textured brushwork mimics traditional gouache and oil interplay. Edges were softened selectively to preserve the sense of softness inherent to plumage, with fine highlights reserved for the beak and eye to create a sense of presence within stillness.