How These 5 Painters Express Wonder of Birds Through Art

“Birds are not just creatures of flight they are reminders of possibility. They are the ones who rise first at dawn to sing us awake, the ones who chart invisible paths across the sky, the ones who appear and vanish in a heartbeat yet leave us changed.”

Throughout history, birds have fascinated poets, storytellers, and artists. They have been guides, omens, messengers, companions, and metaphors for everything from freedom to fragility. With the opening of our international virtual exhibition, Birds, we are reminded of how powerful their presence can be.

Every day, we are humbled by the submissions arriving from around the globe paintings of wings mid-flight, sculptures that capture the fragile beauty of feathers, photographs that freeze a single bird in a moment of sky, collages and textiles that trace migrations across entire continents. Each artwork becomes a small act of wonder, a glimpse into how each artist sees and feels the presence of birds in their world. Taken together, these submissions form a chorus a flock reminding us of the many ways birds connect us to earth, to air, and to each other.

But this exhibition is already becoming more than an online gallery. It is a living aviary of ideas an ever-growing collection of visions and voices. Each submission doesn’t just add another image to a digital wall; it expands the conversation about what birds mean, what they represent, and why they continue to take flight in our imaginations. Good news! There’s still time to submit, so if birds carry your story, you can share it too.

Five Painters Who Let Birds Inspire Their Brush

Among the submissions received so far, five artists especially caught our attention. Their works explore the theme of birds in ways that are intimate, profound, and thought-provoking.

Here is a closer look at five submissions that remind us just how transformative this theme can be:

Ashley Nieuwenhuizen @panther_rex

Ashley Nieuwenhuizen is one of the wonderful artists who submitted for our virtual exhibition on theme bird. Born in Johannesburg in 1984 and now based in Scotland, she brings a rich blend of cross-continental experience to her work. After immigrating to Scotland in 1998, Ashley pursued Fine Art studies at DJCAD in Dundee and later completed an MFA, grounding her practice in both formal training and lived journeys. Her art spans drawing, painting, sculpture, and printmaking, with a conceptual anchor in the relationships between animals, humans, and habitat. Ashley’s work often explores the space where the wild meets the familiar where birds may represent more than flight, but also the threads that tie us into ecosystems, memory, and identity.

Influenced by her travels across Europe, the Far East, and her native South Africa, Ashley uses both scientific detail and imaginative transformation. In her drawings and prints, you may see feathered forms fused with foliage, or birds perched amid abstracted terrain; in her sculptures, creatures emerge as hybrids of the organic and the symbolic. Each piece negotiates the tension between fragility and strength, between belonging and otherness.

She has exhibited across the UK and abroad including shows at The Dean Gallery, Running Time, New Contemporaries, and The Royal Scottish Academy and is a member of the Art & Nature Collective in Dundee, Scotland. Through her work, Ashley invites us to re-encounter the wild as an intimate part of ourselves, reminding us that birds are not just visitors to our skies, but echoes of our deeper ecological and emotional homes.

Rosana Chavez @ro.cha.art

Rosana Chavez is one of the inspiring artists who submitted for our virtual exhibition Birds. From her earliest memories, she has drawn from the moment she could hold a pencil. Raised in a creatively rich household that moved frequently, art became Rosana’s sanctuary a constant connection to place, memory, and the heart. Her workflows between abstraction and figuration, where birds often emerge not just as subjects but as metaphors. She uses oil over acrylics on canvas in many of her original works, layering textures, colour, and form to explore themes of transformation, identity, flight, and freedom. Pieces such as “Birds of a Feather,” “A Thing with Feathers,” and “Song of Sixpence” show her fascination with feathers, movement, and the interplay between air and earth.

While some works feel gentle and lyrical, others pulse with energy and colour. Her palette ranges from tranquil turquoise to vivid contrasts, reflecting both inner calm and emotional intensity. Through each brush stroke, Rosana seems to plant roots and wings simultaneously grounding us even as she invites us to soar. Rosana’s artistry is deeply personal. Moving often during childhood meant she experienced home as many places, sometimes fleeting.

This multiplicity shows up in her work in layers of texture and overlapping motifs: birds perched, wings mid-flight, abstracts that evoke sky-spaces and feathered forms. Her art is, in a way, about belonging and the journey between places as much as arriving.

Through her submissions to Birds, Rosana Chavez reminds us that flight is never simple escape it’s heritage, longing, memory, colour, and voice. Her paintings don’t just show birds, they carry them: in line, in shape, in light, in emotional weight in what it means to move, to stay, and to call someplace home.

Alyssa Joy Black @alyssajoyblackartist

Alyssa Joy Black is one of the remarkable artists featured in our virtual exhibition Birds. Known as “The Obsessive Compulsive Creative,” Alyssa transforms her personal journey into a celebration of resilience, beauty, and creativity. Her creative practice is a testament to the power of art to heal and uplift. Living with OCD and other mental health challenges, Alyssa uses her work as a way to bring light into shadowed spaces, turning struggles into powerful expressions of hope and strength. Her pieces radiate honesty, emotion, and a quiet courage that resonates deeply with viewers.

Her visual style often blends expressive forms and evocative textures, creating works that feel both intimate and universal. Through her Awakening series and other creations, Alyssa invites us into moments of growth, self-discovery, and renewal like wings unfurling after a storm. Alyssa holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Curtin University, majoring in Fine Art and Visual Culture, which has shaped her practice into a thoughtful blend of technique and emotion.

Her work reminds us that creativity is a bridge between challenge and possibility, offering solace and connection. By contributing to Birds, Alyssa Joy Black reminds us that flight is a metaphor for transformation rising above difficulties, finding freedom in expression, and embracing the beauty of becoming. Her work doesn’t just show birds, it carries the feeling of flight itself: hopeful, expansive, and full of life.

Muriel Barrat @muriel_barrat_peinture

Muriel Barrat is another gifted artist who submitted to our virtual exhibition Birds. From her studio in France, Muriel paints with both passion and tenderness, seeing birds not just as subjects but as companions whispering to us from the trees, perching on the edges of our stories. Muriel’s work is deeply connected to nature. She often draws inspiration from trees, branches, leaves, and skies, weaving birds into these natural forms in ways that feel both familiar and magical. Her brush captures light filtering through foliage, the soft curve of a wing, and the quiet moments when feathers ruffle in the breeze.

Through her use of colour, texture, and form, Muriel’s paintings emanate a gentle joy. There’s a sense of calm in her compositions; even when wings are spread, they seem to promise rest. Birds become symbols of hope and renewal, as much as of flight. Her practice shows patience and presence. Each piece feels considered, each stroke intentional. Muriel invites her audience into meditative spaces places where one might sit quietly under a tree, watch a bird, listen, breathe. In these moments, she reminds us that birds are more than wings and sky they are anchors of peace, rhythm, and wonder.

With her submission to Birds, Muriel Barrat brings us into a world where flight is gentle, where nature is both teacher and companion, and where every bird in the painting holds a promise: that even small moments of beauty can lift our spirits.

Kirsty McIntyre @kirstymcintyreart

Kirsty McIntyre is one of the talented artists who submitted to our virtual exhibition Birds. With a creative voice rooted in sensitivity, observation, and emotional depth, Kirsty’s work carries a soft power one that invites viewers to lean in and listen. Her style often blends natural detail with expressive looseness. In Kirsty’s paintings, birds may appear perched on delicate branches, wings caught in pause, or silhouettes folding into light.

Her colour palettes are thoughtful and atmospheric: muted tones, gentle contrasts, moments of luminosity that feel like dawn or twilight. While she captures form, Kirsty also captures feeling. Her brush doesn’t simply outline a bird, it seems to trace a memory, a breath, a moment of silence between motion. In her work, birds are not just subjects but companions: familiar, haunting, hopeful.

Each piece she makes feels like an invitation to pause, to feel, to notice. Through her submission to Birds, Kirsty McIntyre reminds us that flight is as much an internal process as an external one that freedom, belonging, and memory can coexist in the delicate balance of feather and light.

Together, these artists show us that birds are not just subjects to be painted or sculpted they are reminders of motion, of cycles, of life moving ever forward.

Note: The artists featured here are highlighted as part of the many inspiring submissions we have received for our Virtual Exhibition Theme Birds. They are not selected or final participants. The official jury process will begin once the submission deadline has passed, and selected artists will be announced thereafter.

Why We Chose “Birds”

Birds are everywhere and nowhere. They are at once grounded and untouchable, familiar yet mysterious. They can be companions we notice daily or distant silhouettes that vanish before we can truly see them. They remind us of freedom, of survival, of journeys that continue beyond the horizon.

This is why the theme resonates so deeply. It asks us not for a single image of a bird but for an entire world of interpretations. It invites us into a constellation of perspectives scientific, symbolic, spiritual that together tell a larger story about our relationship to nature, to flight, and to the spaces we inhabit.

Who Can Apply

This exhibition is open to:

• Women-identifying and non-binary artists worldwide
• Artists aged 18 and above, regardless of career stage or background
• Every medium and discipline, painting, drawing, textiles, photography, sculpture, ceramics, digital art, installation, film, performance, and more

It does not matter if this is your very first submission or one of many in a long career. Every vision of a bird whether literal or symbolic carries meaning, and every perspective adds a new note to this shared chorus.

Participation Details

• Submitting your work is free. There are no fees to be considered for the exhibition itself.
• Artists may opt into an exclusive interview feature for $12. These interviews allow you to share your story, process, and inspirations with an international audience, giving context to your work and amplifying your voice.

Our goal is to make participation open, accessible, and inclusive, because the story of birds their flight, their symbolism, their presence in our lives can only be complete when all voices are welcome to share what they see and feel.

Deadline

Submission Deadline: October 9, 2025 (11:59 PM EST)

Selection Notification: Within three weeks after the submission deadline

Virtual Exhibition Launch: One month after selected artists are announced

Where Do Birds Take You?

Birds are more than feathers and wings they are symbols of everything that moves us, carries us, and reminds us to rise. Whether you see them in your dreams, in your neighbourhood trees, or in the pages of old stories, your interpretation matters.

Through This theme, we invite you to share your vision and join a global gathering of artists reflecting on flight, fragility, and freedom. Let your work take wing and join this chorus of imagination.