More and more Gannets!

By now I think everyone must realize that I cannot let go of the gannets of Lambert's Bay. Suddenly I see seabirds in my future as an artist: going into more and more detail and entering the world of Wildlife Art by painting the precious and protected birds of the West Coast.

The great exhibition of 630 works by 63 artists, called "A Slice of Life" opens this week in Somerset West. On the 10 wooden blocks I received, I used 4 for my gannets. I showed one piece last week, and here are the three others. You can see how they all look together in the first photo.

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To Market, to Market

This gannet painting sized 8x8 is one of the ten I created for the exhibition I told you about last week. How to describe this amazing concept? The show is called "A Slice of Life" and will show 630 works by 63 South African artists, picked by Avril Gardiner from all corners of the country. Our opening is Wednesday 3rd November 2010. The 630 'slices of life' will be displayed on one wall and will be revealed at 6pm sharp.

Let me assure you, not one of us artists are even allowed to view THE WALL before opening night.I have seen photos of the work of Salome Briers who painted scenes from the Bokaap and District 6, very colourful and beautiful!

My viewer counter here on the blog show that nearly over 2600 unique South Africans have visited my blog. Who ARE you? (like they say in almost every Hollywood film)....you are invited to The Liebrecht Gallery to attend this event! For my friends who cannot attend, I will keep you updated!

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We are the Custodians of Nature

"Man, the Hero" is sitting on his pedestal. How big is his task to reign over the earth, yet he looks quite smug and loves to be admired! As consumers we are so totally responsible for the balance in our world. Of course we may use certain things, but how much can we safely claim for ourselves? As consumers and travellers we need the oil that is transported in huge amounts over the oceans. How can it be done more safely without spoiling our beautiful planet? We all know how a great spill can effect our birds!

We have little control over the harvesting of hundreds of thousands of seabird eggs yearly in societies where it is the main source of protein for humans. Closer to home, cats, with the blessing of their vets, insist on their favourite brands of tinned food, while at the fish factories fleets of boats are going out to trawl the oceans for the tons of fish needed to be processed as pet food for the supermarket shelves!

For tourists and photographers, visiting the gannets is a breathtaking experience, yet care must be taken while large stone buildings are erected. Busy, noisy and dusty human activities can be stressful for the birds indeed. Tourism provides the funds needed for caring and monitoring the birds, so we hope that the pros outweigh the cons when we build these bird hides! The habits of the birds can be carefully monitored from here, but sometimes selected birds will have to carry a ring with data inscribed in it. Scientists have noticed that the ringing of a gannet can put the pair off breeding for a whole season!

My big-headed little man on his pedestal! I hope he can keep the balance! (The cartoon was done in great haste and from the imagination as I had to leave the West Coast for my solo exhibition in Pretoria.) I would love to hear your thoughts on this sensitive topic.

After commenting here, I recommend a visit to the amazing miniature gannet painting done by the inimitable Tracy Hall. Now that is lovely, don't you agree?

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The Gannet Colony

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They are up with the first light in the morning and the daily choir of thousands of decibels hit the morning air above Bird Island. I suppose each shouts out his own hunger and intentions for fishing, and with such a crowd, there may also be a lot of admonitions to little ones not to get lost! Speaking of that: it is amazing how they land back in their own space after flight and always know their own little black blobs from the surrounding chicks!

With creatures living so close to each other, there is apt to be some tension. Gannets relieve the tension by doing the neck-rubbing ceremony with the birds working on their nerves. It is not a mating ceremony. In this large painting, I have painted this beautiful and graceful movement. Well, here we have a lesson from the gannets: if a guy or lady grabs the parking spot we were already entering (!!!!), maybe we should shake hands or give them a little hug! See? the tension will be gone!

Further in this panorama, you will see the largish chicks, the hesitant flyers and the airborne ones. In the final and 5th post on this theme(which may only appear in ten day's time unless I get an internet connection where I am going) I will post the last of this series on the gannets of Lambert's Bay! The theme will be MAN and his relationship with the threatened birds.

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Fear of Flying?

This post comes to you from Pretoria where my West Coast exhibition takes place this week. The last week before leaving I painted enough gannets, photographed them and put them on disc. How easy it is to put your work in your purse nowadays. The same cannot be said of all the paintings we hauled up here!

The time watching the gannets from the bird hide on Bird Island at Lambert's Bay was one of the most exciting times of my life. One can never get enough of that lovely mass of soft yellow heads, interspersed with the black Pacman-like, feature-less baby gannets! Soon, however, I started focussing on the spectacle of their flying.

The soil where they trample around is very hard, and they have a strip that they use for taking off, with many bodies actually walking through it. So to find a clear few yards to run before rising from the ground is difficult. Again and again they try, lose courage or halt to avoid a wanderer in their way and go back to try again. Flap-flap goes the feet designed for swimming over the hard crusty earth. I promise you that an onlooker can become utterly nervous! The eventual take-off is not very smooth but quite faltering!

On the edges, where the rocks are, others peek over the precipice before throwing themselves into the air. There are akward moments when they almost hang in the air, trying to find the proper movements. As if my readers are not upset enough by this time, I also have to tell you that the landings on those enormous feet looks like a great plopping down! I was saddened but not surprised to read in Nelson's book on seabirds that some gannets can injure or kill themselves in flying accidents! Here, close to the earth they have their worst close shaves with danger.

But of course, what takes place in the first moments of alighting is absolutely forgotten the moment they stretch out in the air, and form a single line from beak to tail, while the wings unfold to an enormous, finely tipped wingspan. Here are the most gracious and effective of flyers who are able to divebomb the sea at such a speed that it carries them down a full ten meters to a supply of fish who never saw it coming! Yeah, for the gannets, can you feel the relief and freedom of those flyers as they do the auronautical tricks they were born for.

Working here on a granddaughters's computer, my images won't download from that disc. I will post and try to rectify the matter soon.

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Looks count!!!

For the next two posts I have painted a set of bright decorative canvasses, of 8x10 of which this painting is the first. With so many shows coming up, I am going to need smaller paintings. But I am also working on a large painting of a gannet colony, so it will be back to normal soon.

Almost everything in the physical appearance of the beautiful gannets have a function! Strange that such lovely birds have these really large chicks with absolutely no facial features besides their loud-loud mouths! Imagine a dark charcoal grey Pacman!

The gannet is brilliant white for the purpose of attracting lots of others when they dive for the fish. From the depths of the ocean, looking up towards the sky, the colour white is not easy to see. So when a lot of these birds hit the ocean, there is great confusion among the fish and they don't have much of a chance!

I could not find a function for the soft yellow heads, maybe it's only for decoration. Now the eyes! A gannet has binocular eyesight. The pale blue eyes are most impressive, and have strong black lines all around, which is naked featherless skin with a cooling function. I have painted so many of these gannets that I see another little bird on each side of the face. Can you see it too? Or is it supposed to mimic the shape of a fish when the gannet dives?

The beak is something to be reckoned with. Liz wrote to me regarding the beaks: "Gannets! I remember washing them during an oil spill! Vicious beaks! " Well done, kind and brave, Liz! Today I also post the photo of the friendly-looking gannet behind the glass of the bird hide, so that you can see the nicks made by these beaks! I love this almost magical photo with the markings and feather-dust and the light filtering through. I took it a few years ago and has been entering it in countless photo competitions but I seem to be the only person liking it!

Down the neck is a gracious black line, and again it is naked skin with a cooling function. The wings of the gannet does not lie flat like in garden birds, but they have thick folds. When the gannet unfolds its wings, the very wide wingspan is a wonder to behold, the width is unexpected. There is a black spot on each wing and the end feathers are black.

That leaves us with the amazing grey fully webbed feet. Great for standing in the colony, for landing flatly, and can be folded out of the way when flying and diving. In the next post I will discuss the flying in greater detail!

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Meet the Gannets

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You don't like crowds and all those loud holiday entertainments? The answer to avoiding all that is to drive North all along the unspoiled West Coast. As my blog is now stretching to distant places we need to stay overnight at our destinations. So off we went to spend a weekend at my favourite place, Lambert's Bay. As we arrived, the whole area spelt out the theme of quiet restfulness. A leasurely meal of one big crayfish with lovely Cape wine dealt with Friday evening.

With what excitement I crossed the foot bridge to Bird Island the next morning! There is a very modern but tastefully built hide at the end of the pathway. "We have 24,000 gannets here" a friendly lady told us. Apparently these precious birds are counted continuously. I spent hours observing them from the hide and will have much to tell (and paint) over the next few posts.

There is a strange story playing out in this painting! The island is also the home of Cape fur seals, introduced to the area in 1985. These fur seals, as we know, have had a hard time in the past and are now furiously protected. And in Lambert's Bay it is not the cats and dogs fighting but the gannet lovers and the seal lovers. Seals eat gannet eggs and chicks, and may lead to dwindling numbers of gannets.

But the seals have a right of living space too. The solution at the moment is but a simple plan. The seals are carefully watched and chased away by shouting at them if they go near eggs or chicks, and here you see it: a man keeps watch from a boat rowed by his team-mate, and the gannets can breed in peace. Can you see them in my third image?

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