Black Swan Story
A coastal bird of Australia: this series is part of a collaboration between Flying Star Toys and artist Rachel Arthur.
I've been interested in creating folk art based on the local wildlife here in South-East Queensland as a way of uniting our imaginative lives to our environment.
I've followed the work of Rachel Arthur for a few years now and we have had many a long talks about representing what is close to our hearts often in the very things we might over look.
Rachel and I have both lived in the same area around Sandgate, Brisbane. It is full of the noise of bird life, fruit bats and possum games on the iron roof tops at night. Her bird paintings have always charmed me and as we talked about art we got to thinking about doing something together.
Rachel came around to my house with some simple pencil illustrations and an old brown port full of her fabrics. One of Rachel's techniques is to paint on cloth wrapped canvas to utilize the pattern and textures of the fabrics, especially the fabrics she has collected from her travels to India. As soon as I saw her illustrations I knew they would be perfect for transformation into toys; they just had that look about them. Those seven illustrations form what is now called the Coastal Bird series and so far three of the seven have been designed based on the illustrations and fabrics of Rachel Arthur.
Here you can see the Black Swan, the black sheep of the family of elegance or rather the rare southern beauty brought up under the burning yellow sun. The fabrics have been chosen to remember the Black Swan's connection to the white swan.
Dimensions: height from head to toe approximately 38cm (15 inches), 32cm (12 1/2 inches) from front to tail.
