The eagle and other teachers
The feast of sunbirds Remarkable, isn’t it, how people grow to resemble their pets! Not only their dogs, but their hamsters and their parrots, and their goldďŹ sh. There is a great harmony in nature, like attracting like, so that, when we choose our pets, they represent an aspect of us. But what when it is the animal who chooses to connect to us?
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The eagle and other teachers
Sunbirds, hummingbirds, sugarbirds, whatever we call them, they were everywhere! Yesterday I took Newton for an evening walk in the cooling sea breeze, and just as we got the spot where the dassies live, all around a tall shrub, we saw twenty or thirty malachite sunbirds, dancing, twisting, fluttering, flying up, down, forward and back, and, heaven knows, having watched them for at least ten minutes, upside down! They were having such fun, sipping nectar and rushing off in sheer excitement, just to return for another helping. When the sunbird enters our life, the legends say, it brings joy and colour and beauty. When we walk into a flock of them, what joy! I went back today with my sketchbook and they were there again. I sat down flat on the ground to draw the sunbirds, not very successfully. With their rapid flitting it was impossible to capture their character.
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The eagle and other teachers
Back in my studio, I drew the beautiful little birds again, this time slowly, and calling on memory, imagination, and visualising to explore, recall and celebrate their elusive charm. The skill of drawing from imagination or from memory, visualising, has always been held to be the greatest artistic gift
Coming back, Anne met us in a ďŹ ne drizzle and we just stood there, watching them, and getting wet, happy as little children.
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The eagle and other teachers
Imagination does not always equate with truth, but the deepest truths are to be found in works of imaginative power. To achieve this kind of truth it is necessary for the artist to be sincere to his vision, both in the physical world, as well as in memory and in imagination. At the bottom of my drawing, I scribbled a note to myself, the lesson of the sunbirds.
If the movement is to fast to capture, use memory.Visualize. Visualising is our connection to joy, our link to the magical world of fantasy, dream, insight, and memory.
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