A Bird in Troubled Waters, Abstract Original Oil Painting, by Van Ness

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A Bird In Troubled Water, Abstract Original Oil Painting, by Van Ness

16”x20” on canvas, Platinum frame, 21.25”x25.25”x2” overall size.

… Read more A Bird In Troubled Water, Abstract Original Oil Painting, by Van Ness

16”x20” on canvas, Platinum frame, 21.25”x25.25”x2” overall size.

A solitary bird on the shores of a restless sea, catching a sliver of golden light that breaks through stormy clouds. The painting is rich in deep, textured strokes—dark blues and slate grays swirl across the canvas, capturing the turbulent energy of the churning water. Whitecaps crash against unseen rocks, hinting at chaos beneath the surface.
The bird, is painted with delicate detail, its feathers subtly highlighted in whites and soft silvers. It is a symbol of grace and resilience, seemingly undisturbed by the turmoil. 
The sky above is heavy, thick with clouds that seem to press down on the scene. It’s a moment of calm caught within chaos, frozen in oils.

Van Ness Artist Statement
My work emerges from the tension between chaos and tenderness—between the instinct to preserve life and the inevitability of its dissolution. I paint in a state suspended between intuition and repair, allowing forms to surface like memories or fossils rising through sediment. What begins as abstraction often resolves into biological suggestion: a turtle-like body, a burst of flowers, a fork, a seed, an eye of something unnamed. These motifs are not planned but discovered, as if the painting itself remembers more than I do.

The layers of paint function like layers of ecology or psyche—built up, scraped back, overwritten, and excavated. Texture is not just a surface but a site of survival. The imagery shifts between the botanical, the animal, and the almost-human, blurring boundaries the way memory blurs time. I am interested in the moment where a mark becomes a creature, where a color becomes a wound, where the familiar becomes uncanny.

The paintings are simultaneously playful and unsettling. They hold both birth and decay in the same breath. I use color and gesture to create an environment that feels alive—lush, overgrown, overripe. The compositions are intentionally unstable, echoing how living systems oscillate between order and collapse.

Ultimately, my work is about the fragile, strange continuity of life—how things hide inside other things, how forms are always transforming. I paint not to illustrate the world but to witness its mutability, to stay inside that charged space where nothing is finished and everything is still becoming.

Nancy Van Ness Art 

Oil Painting Artist See less