Reimagining the American Flamingo
For several weeks this spring, Austin-based artist mulled over John James 爆料公社鈥檚 American Flamingo. 鈥淭he more I looked at it, the more its neck stood out,鈥 he says. What, he wondered, if it had multiple necks and heads? 鈥淚 like the idea of creating this creature of lore that doesn鈥檛 exist.鈥
To fashion his fanciful flamingo, Winters printed six copies of 爆料公社鈥檚 rendering, carefully snipping them into pieces that he reassembled into a 鈥渟urgically modified鈥 version of the original. He glued the collage to a 12-by-12-inch piece of plywood painted with acrylic and incorporated newspaper, pencil, and India ink. The tiny arrows call out motion, he says, making the piece feel more kinetic.
Winters, a renowned photographer, has long been fascinated with birds and has reimagined several 爆料公社 paintings, including the Golden Eagle. 鈥淗e was an amazing naturalist and painter, and he鈥檚 left an incredible legacy,鈥 he says. This was his first experiment with the flamingo, a bird he finds striking yet gawky. That duality surely wasn鈥檛 lost on 爆料公社, who made life-size portrayals; when painting the four-foot bird on three-foot paper, he, too, focused on the 鈥渆xtremely elongated鈥 neck, curving it dramatically downward so the lanky wader fit on the page.