A dusky robin sits on a mossy branch, with the classic upright stance that in dim light helps to distinguish the species.
The dusky, as its name suggests, lacks the red or pink of the other robin species seen in Tasmania, and so I listen for another identifying feature, the soft, melancholic tune which birders describe as the “sad song.” The song doesn’t come, nor the flutter of wings, and I realise that artist Belinda Kurczok, has played a sly trick on me.
She has painted a robin so full of life that for a moment I cannot believe it is lifeless. It is a flight of fancy that lives only in my imagination; it summons the sublime, happy times I have walked in woodland and seen the “duskies” flitting from branch to branch and diving on insects crawling in the dry grass.
Belinda’s work makes an impact and I feel it every time I attend one of her exhibitions. The same goes for Tasmania’s other notable bird artists, Catherine Cooper, Lois Bury, and Tim Squires among them.
Before the Covid restrictions closed galleries, I recall an exhibition by Catherine Cooper whose work melds seabirds with ocean, and earlier this month Belinda returned with another display at the Salamanca Arts Centre which largely focused on woodland birds and the foliage they use for perches.
Belinda is notable for painting our 12 bird species found nowhere else on earth – the “endemics” which attract both national and international birders to Tasmania.
In her latest exhibition, strong-billed and yellow-throated honeyeaters, scrubtits and green rosellas flew from the canvas.
Such relatively frequent exhibitions suggest that the age of the bird artist and illustrator is not dying, as may be suggested by the phenomenal rise in the number of people taking up bird photography.
Once birders were merely content to scribble details of their sightings in notebooks, but it now appears that many are not happy unless they have a photograph.
However, a counter-culture is emerging. Although for years Australian Birdlife magazine has devoted a page to photography, the latest edition urges photographers to take up pen and paper and sketch their subjects along with taking pictures.
I have always considered photographs of birds as “flat”, lacking the essence of their subject. The author of the article, Peter Marsack, does not exactly share my view but nonetheless says the act of drawing from life anchors the nature lover in the place and moment of the sighting. It also gives the birder an emotional connection which is not just the product of technology.
The importance of art speaks for itself while viewing the exhibitions. When it comes to capturing the magic of birds, the artists rule the roost.
*Although Belinda’s exhibition has closed, her work and that of the other artists can be seen on their websites.