Girl with a Red Bird on a Stick

For my second small painted collage from old Chinese folk paper cuts I used the cut out of a girl with a bird on a stick. Was she taking it to market? Or was she perhaps taking from a market and back to home? This girl carrying a bird also has the strange proportions of the previous paper cut of a girl holding a lantern - a large head on a small body. But this one sports tiny pointed shoes.


My last painting in this series was in an almost monochromatic pallet of grey tones so I decided to add bright colors to this one. I used a series of acrylic washes to build up a background and smeared heavier bodied pigments into that. The folk art paper cut was basically featureless so I painted in a rather classic looking face. I believe it transformed the girl from Chinese folk art to Russian folk art.