Migrating Starlings 1981

Curator: Here we have Maria Bozoky’s watercolor piece, "Migrating Starlings," completed in 1981. The piece employs what appears to be a plein-air approach to capturing the landscape. Editor: Oh, it has a dreamlike quality! The colors feel both vibrant and muted, and those thin lines give it this nervous energy, almost like the wind is about to pick everything up and blow it away. Curator: Bozoky’s treatment of light and color is really what makes it stand out. The ethereal washes suggest a focus on capturing fleeting moments and the overall atmospheric conditions. Watercolor as a medium allows for an unparalleled freedom when dealing with capturing light effects and movement, which is clear from the gestural line-work visible in the tree on the left. Editor: Absolutely. The pinks and blues, the bare branches – it reminds me of childhood winters. It’s not just what’s depicted, but how – the way the water and pigment bleed into each other, creates a sense of memory, hazy and incomplete, you know? Curator: Considering her broader body of work, one might read the choice of watercolor and this delicate treatment as a deliberate commentary on the relationship between nature and artistic production itself, almost highlighting the ways these materials work in conversation with each other. Editor: You know, there’s something quite romantic about that approach – this idea that the artist is essentially surrendering to the material, allowing it to dictate the final form. Curator: Indeed, there is a marked focus here not only on the aesthetic result but the performative element of "doing". You might read the Romantic underpinnings within that mode of engagement, which foregrounds subjectivity, individual perspective, and emotional resonance within the experience of seeing the work of art. Editor: Well, seeing it like this, with a lens focused on the processes and social meanings involved… changes things. Curator: Perhaps it’s about reminding us that art isn’t just about seeing, but about how and why we see, what labour that entails for both maker and consumer.