About Birds and Art

This week is about observing birds and bringing them into our art.

Let’s start with a lonely budgie.

Last fall, the same sight always awaited me in the mornings – a lonely budgie in a big cage. The door was open, and I turned on the full-spectrum bird lamp, but nothing cheered her up. Ever since Primavera’s husband Leonardo had died unexpectedly, her world had been empty, and even the best YouTube budgies couldn’t fill it.

I have had budgies since 1991. My first budgie, Piuku, was also alone at first. Unlike 5-year-old Primavera, Piuku was a young bird. She adapted to being alone by taking me as her best friend. Later on, Piuku got other birds as companions.

Birds Bring Joy

The most enviable quality of birds is their ability to fly, but the more you get to know birds, the more you realize that their social life is very lively. A small flock of a few budgies can be like a soap opera. There will be arguments, gusts of affection, gossip, singing sessions, and all kinds of fun play. This way, the day flies by!

I have admired birds since swallows made their nest in the eaves of my childhood home. There were many other birds in the big yard too. I had bird books, and I dreamed about seeing kingfishers and other exotic birds.

Similarly, as wild birds make you look up, pet birds bring lightness to the home. Their vocals are clear and the flight sounds lighten the atmosphere. It is as if the world is not only lying down but also up in the air.

Birds and Flowers

At the beginning of my entrepreneurial career in 2008, I founded an Etsy shop to sell crafts and named it Kukkilintu.

Kukkilintu is a Karelian embroidered bird pattern that symbolizes happiness.

Karelia is a place in Eastern Finland, a part of it was lost in the war with Russia in 1940. I live in Southern Finland but was born in Northern Karelia.

Karelian people believed that the soul leaves the body in the form of a bird. Kukkilintu is a bit like the Finnish version of the peacock, which appears in the designs of other countries with the same meaning.

I thought the name “kukkilintu” was funny because it had the words “kukka” and “lintu” – “flower” and “bird.” When I was thinking about a name for my art blog a couple of years later in 2010, I thought that the flower could be a peony and the bird a budgie, so, a parakeet.

These two themes “flower” and “bird” have guided my creative process. I have wanted to learn the language of flowers and create beauty in the world, but also understand the life of birds and include their movement. Birds, flowers, and art belong together.

However, recently in my everyday life, it happened that the more I delved into the flowers, the more time they took away from the birds. I didn’t want to keep pet birds anymore, but felt that watching wild birds would be enough.

Magical Scene

Outdoors, one scene is above the rest – when a bird flies across the scenery. The bird then becomes kukkilintu – a flower bird. It takes over the landscape and erases all the sadness.

I came up with this when I was grieving the death of one of my dogs. Since then this very ordinary event has made me happy. It’s a message from the world that we always have inside of us, but that we don’t always remember, especially when we’re like a lonely budgie that has a hard time seeing ahead in life.

We must believe in our abilities, and happy endings as well. I found a new home for Primavera, where it has a spouse who was also widowed. I wish Primavera a long life. After all, it already has a long-lived name-sake, the famous painting by Botticelli born in the 15th century, which I have been to Florence to admire.

Do birds appear in your art?