In 2025, I was very lucky to travel overseas and experience seeing birds in new places I had not seen before. These images below are from art galleries, museums, universities and gardens we visited in Vienna, Spain, Portugal and London.
I love how birds are represented in any medium. Travel opens up opportunities to find out about birds I have never heard of and their folklore and magic: a sulphur-crested cockatoo appearing in Belvedere Palace, lacework in the Museum of Applied Arts and a pottery bird in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, a little 17th century Flemish purse in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK, being a cabinet curiosity ‘stuffed’ between porcelain vases at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, a little Robin at Kew Gardens, London, an embroidered Mitre for a Pope in Cadiz, Spain and inside the National Portrait Gallery, London to see a powerful image of a guinea fowl becoming a symbol of the resistance to slavery. These are only a few on many images I saw. I’m so looking forward to making new birds in reference to the history and cultures I observed.
