The Scarlet Ibis in particular, and Ibises more generally
are an ongoing motif.

My palate is most often muted or tonal but sometimes I do
like to add a dash of colour, particularly the kind of deep, glowing colour
that seems to emanate from for example flowers at dusk- as if they had absorbed
the sunlight during the day and are now releasing it once the sun has gone
down. This was the feeling I was looking for in this painting. By making sure
the background clouds were almost completely de-saturated with the merest hint
of green and by using a particular Cadmium Red made by Blockx for the Ibises I
could set up an optical effect that would mimic that sensation of the light
coming from the subject.

Counterintuitively I often think of my work in terms of
sound i.e. what is the sound sense I want to evoke in a painting? For this
piece I wanted complete silence apart from the undulating sigh of wings moving
effortlessly through air, a kind of breathing.