Parrot 1918

Tadeusz Makowski made this painting of a parrot, with what looks like oil paint, and a real urgency to capture the moment. There’s a lovely sensitivity in the way he approaches colour, not exactly naturalistic, but heightened, like a memory. Look how the pink of the parrot's head and chest almost bleeds into the green backdrop. It’s all about the materiality of the paint. He doesn’t try to hide the brushstrokes, there’s a real joy in the direct application of paint to canvas. He leaves this band of exposed canvas around the border, which emphasizes the process, as if the act of making is more important than the object that remains. That area of thick white impasto, just under the parrot. It’s anyone's guess! Maybe another bird, maybe just a happy accident. It puts me in mind of Bonnard, in the way it manages to find a new and unique way of seeing something as familiar as a bird on a perch. But, like all great art, it resists definition, happy to remain ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations.