Redheads and birds

A bird in a portrait can give give an extra psychological undertone that the artist thinks important.

Birds can symbolize many  different sides , innocence, freedom, confusion, noise, a bickering nature, captivation if caged, beauty, majestic power or  innocence etc 

I found several pictures which each give the red haired females another attribution 

because they also contain a bird.

Andrea Kowch

Andrea Kowch has humor and fantasy like none else, love her funny  pictures.

For me the birds in this picture show the female ability to do a million things at the same time.

Joaquin Sunyer i di Miro

What a huge body he gave her.

The bird tells about an enormous calmness so big that even a wild bird become trustful in her presence.

 I hear a clear crying seagull, combined with the cold icy  beauty. Another kind of Snow queen than the one H.C Anderson created. This one tells about being lonelyness.

Can You see the almost invisible seagull in her arm?

Many years ago I was in Norway staying at the artist house in Svolvaer .

One day I saw a huge young beige spotted seagull  in the garden ,  it was soaked in Machine oil. The huge bird  was easy to catch, because they can't fly when the oil destroy the zipper effect of the feather strings , the feathers simply can't hold the air. I took the huge bird into the shower and washed it with my hair shampoo. I had to close the sharp peek with a rubber, because it bit  me in the arms and legs. The peek is riffled in the edge like a big bread knife, so it can tear  like a sharp saw. Birds are extremely strong in the peek. The only way to get the bird to loosen the grip if it bites and wont let go, is to close it's nostrils.

When the bird was clean of oil, I dried it with a hairdryer.Then I remembered that there was a sauna

in the artist house. So the seagull and I went to the sauna.

Now this is a big bird, same size as a slim goose. So the tiny sauna was well  stuffed with the two of us.

The seagull quickly had it too hot and opened the wings. Then I remembered that animals 

and birds don't sweat  trough the skin, but trough the mouth, so I removed the rubber from it's peek.

After some time I couldn't stand the heat any longer and wanted to go out, but the seagull didn't want  and 

was now so recovered that  it could fly and fight, which it did.

The seagull caught my nose in the strong peek and gave me a tor of the skin that looked

like the irritating tors that kids gets in their pants in a 90 degree angle.

I finally got the seagull out. The feathers were fine and no signs of oil .I decided it could stay indoor over the night so it would not get a cold from the big temperature difference between the sauna and outdoors.

In the harbor I bought some smaller fish.

The seagull swallowed all the fish with an enormous appetite, it looked at me as to ask is there more?

So I went to get more. It was extremely hungry!

The other artists in the house were afraid of the huge seagull, so I locked it in the living room over the night

We slept well  all of us and in the morning I was the first  down to look at  the seagull , 

and got the worst surprise.

The huge bird had shit all over , huge stinking seas of watery white slime and half digested fish pieces all over the tables and sofa , in  the windows ,on the Television on pictures and the on the carpet.

Hours of work a head of me, not to speak of the blaming words from my fellow artists.

The bird was not staying another day!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was escorted out in the garden. I gave it another 3-4 fish as a goodbye  present.

And expected it would fly away. But no it staid. It staid all the month I was there 

and begged for food! So I gave it  what ever was left of our meals.

Half a year later on, my parents also went to visit the Svolvaer's artist house,

and who was still there? "Pia's seagull" as it now was called in the town, where everyone 

knew the begging feathered devil.

It was now fully grown and got the fine white and grey color.

Who knows perhaps it's still there, I hear they can get very old.

Here is a photo of another big Seagull.

 With the wings  opened, they measure more than a meter .

The bird is ca 60 cm from head to tail and weigh around perhaps 3 kilo.

Seagull by Michael Miloserdoff

So welcome to this post where I found redheads with birds.

Agate Apkalne

Here the birds fly out of her chest symbolizing  captivity, perhaps  only trough 

the feelings or thoughts can this woman escape.

Angel Zarraga

Sweet as a chicken.

Paul Helleu

Elegant as the peacock

Karl Albert Buehr

2 caged birds , Buehr also had humor!

De Riquer

So many chickens symbolize compassion and how we take care of even the most innocent.

Constant Montald

Motherhood in all it's variations.

Robert Lewis Reid

Who doesn't love Japanese Kimonos

Again ascetic elegance.

The owl has always symbolized cleverness, 

but here it also symbolizes compassion and fragility 

It characterizes the woman , not only is she a seldom beauty but she has all this sides

that the owl represent , besides being rare and possessing a mysterious serene wildness.

Had she caressed a turkey I don't think it would have given any flattering hints to hidden sides of her.

Theresa Oats
Owl on a screen

The bird  looks rather dumb.Compared to the Owl above,

Giovanni Segantini

Can't tell what this symbolizes but  perhaps the Female orgasm?

I have to add a picture that is almost identical in idea ,
but the birds are exchanged with a much more
impressive animal.
Have to add as a female artist I would never get the idea to paint men in water
with either screaming seagulls or luring ice bears.

Arthur Wardle

N.C. Wyeth

A wish for freedom?

He also made two  pictures of red haired men with birds

N.C.Wyeth

Here the birds don't symbolize anything, the man is collecting eggs.

N.C Wyeth
Robinson Crusoe

The parrot always illustrated solitude and the fact that many lonely people talk to them self to fight the
silence and situation that they have none to talk with.
But I guess in this situation it is over analyzing.....  Robinson Crusoe is just teaching his parrot to talk

Frederick Sandys
The raven always symbolizes  fate and warnings.

This print is nicer and much more dramatic
and the proportions of the different details are more interesting,
 than in  following painting .
Just too bad that  she got really short legged in the painting.
And the bird went from being a raven in the print  to becoming
 a blackbird with a ridiculous hunchback .

Frederic Sandys

I have to put a few words of praise for a bird I had the enormous
privilege to mother until he was big enough to take care of himself.
He is a Bulbul  by the name NYP .And he still comes when I call him .
One day I will make a painting of him and me.

NYP sitting on my computer.

 A bulbul couple made a nest in one of my big plants, laid 3 eggs,and grew  two of them to feathers and left a tiny naked chick in the nest and flew with the stronger siblings. I called him NYP and took him because the parents seemed to have abandoned  him. NYP grew in a small plastic cage which
my sons have for their obscure love for Mantises. Lots of this huge green or brownish elegant insects have crawled on each cm of my home for as long as I can remember , but they were now bandoned for the months it took to grow NYP to his full size. Being well experienced in catching flies for all the Mantis after my sons didn't find it funny any longer, I got some really hard  job with this small purple featherless chick.It had to eat every 8-10 minutes, during the whole day And there are't that many flies around when You need them. Hunting flies became a full time occupation for a whole month util he could manage by himself . I laid meat out and let it rotten in the sun, so it brought more flies
and they were relatively easy to catch,  if one hold a plastic bag upside down over them.
NYP ate like probably never before and got a few downs on the head and naked tiny body. He could not stand on his feet, because he could not open the toes. So I made a small snowshoe for each foot and taped the toes open unto the snowshoes. After some time he managed to walk a little and then I added a stick to the cage that he had to hold unto it with his toes.
NYP sat on my shoulder most of the day and I went everywhere with him even outdoors.
He would hide under my ear and in my long hair. He eventually learned to fly and flew for small trips out of the window to the closest tree. When something scared him he flew quickly home to his place under my ear.
His parents recognized the chick and tried to adopt him back . But he did not want them. They tried every day without luck.  But after a few months I had to travel for an Exhibition and could not bring NYP with
me. When I came home he had left our home and only comes visiting every day staring in trough the windows or sitting talking to me a meter away on some low branch of our big Jacaranda tree. He never lands on my shoulder anymore. But I can like a bird mother recognize his voice between 100 other Bulbuls. And he still comes when I call him. He now has a family of his own  and I am happy he became a wild bird again..

NYP resting in my husbands hands