Feather painting by Julia Thompson

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

People have been accustomed to using feathers since the dawn of civilization. They stuffed pillows and featherbeds, decorated helmets and arrows, hats and hairstyles, wrote letters … And the artist Julie Thompson wanted to paint feathers. Let's see what came out of this venture.

Julia Thompson began her difficult career in 1990. According to the artist herself, at first she turned to this occupation only in order to find at least some use for the feathers that fell from the wings of peacocks belonging to her mother. “Having never done this before, but knowing about the bonding properties of acrylic paints, I decided that this was a completely feasible experiment,” says the artist. Starting with simple plots, over time, Julia moved on to depicting more complex drawings.

Julia was born and raised in Alaska. According to the artist, the influence of the majestic landscapes of her native land permeates most of her works. Julia Thompson's main subjects are paintings from the life of the wild, but sometimes the artist depicts people on peacock feathers. It takes from 8 to 16 hours to paint one feather. Julia admits that she works slowly but accurately, trying to give each image as much life and emotion as possible.

The artist has no problems with subjects, but sometimes she has problems with "canvases". She says that in America there are many laws that protect birds - to the point that in some states it is impossible to collect bird feathers. But Julia is not discouraged and relies on the peacocks and turkeys kept on her mother's ranch in Southern California.

Julia Thompson's painted feathers are known all over the world and are quite successfully sold through her website. By the way, for one pen enclosed in glass under a frame, they ask for $ 275. Not cheap, but the artist's work is painstaking and very original …