To The Birds II
Paul Newman
To the Birds II, 2020
Acrylic on board (framed)
85 x 65 cm
Signed and dated verso
Exhibited: Reflections, Aleph Contemporary, curated by Rosa JH Berland
In To the Birds II, Paul Newman delivers a dynamic and richly textured meditation on environmental fragility, history, and visual storytelling. Central to the work is a large, stylised bird—part organic, part geometric—standing in a painterly puddle of reflected forms. Behind it, a fragmented landscape unfolds: smoking industrial chimneys, abstracted fields, a horseback rider echoing art historical motifs, and checkerboard grids that reference both the pastoral and the pixelated.
The painting’s ornate frame, streaked with caution stripes and distressed textures, becomes an active part of the composition—blurring boundaries between artwork, object, and construction site. This self-aware framing device signals Newman’s broader concerns: the encroachment of industrial modernity on natural and cultural heritage, and the uneasy role of painting in an age of collapse and reinvention.
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Rebecca Meanly
Abstract Paintings