Don Binney’s ‘bird’ paintings have long been seen as the trademark of his oeuvre and are a theme to which the artist has recently returned after several years of focus on more graphic and collage-centred pieces. Though this work is chronologically later than are his more well-known bird paintings from the 1960s, Binney’s Kokako, Tiritiri Matangi nonetheless illustrates a fine example of the topic for which he is so well known.
In his early ‘bird paintings’, such as Fat Bird or Kereru Over Wainamu, the birds so dominate the space that the backgrounds are often reduced to indistinct curves and do not play a vital role in the overall piece beyond setting a scene for the bird to occupy. Over the years, the landscapes became more prominent and shared the space with the birds as a focus of equal importance, before eventually becoming the subject matter in their own right, such as in Scrunties Island and Man’s Head II. In Kokako, Tiritiri Matangi, the kokako is suspended mid-flight in a sweeping, pale blue sky above the sanctuary island of Tiritiri Matangi. Varying degrees of paint give his wings texture and subtle shifts in tint provide more depth of colour to his body. The landscape below is treated with flat but vibrant hues of green and the ocean, which mirrors the colour of the sky, effectively brings the kokako even more into the foreground of the work. The strong horizontal lines of the work, mimicked between the kokako, the horizon and the ocean, nicely frame the bird within its landscape.