Isabelle • 14 • Cork

This surreal (acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas) painting depicts a roseate spoonbill wading in shallow water, looking for shrimps and fish. There is a black and white banded sea snake circling around a plethora of coral, and climbing up the spoonbill’s legs. Three Townsend warblers fly in to land on the spoonbill’s wings. As this was going to be an above and underwater scene, I decided on my favourite bird, the roseate spoonbill, a sea-wading bird. I also wanted to include my love of snakes in this painting, so I decided on a sea snake, as I wanted a creature to live in the underwater part of my painting. I then added coral, fish, shrimps and the Townsend warblers to my piece as I was designing it. This painting is surreal because this combination of animals would not be found together in nature. The black banded sea snake is found only around the islands of the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern hemisphere. On the other hand, roseate spoonbills are found only on the western side of the Pacific Ocean (southern hemisphere), and on Atlantic coasts of North and South America. I have always enjoyed painting and drawing. Ever since I was old enough to pick up a pencil, I knew that this was what I wanted to do in life. I started taking my art seriously when I was ten years old, during lockdown, when they started showing Bob Ross’ painting series on TV. From this starting point, I have been striving for realism ever since. I mostly started out painting landscapes, then portraits, and now I paint mainly wildlife, working in a large range of mediums. As I was painting this surreal roseate spoonbill painting, I was working from dozens of different reference photos, trying to make them all fit harmoniously in one painting. The painting took about one month to complete, finally finishing it at the beginning of October 2024.