Spring is finally here - well, it's supposed to be anyway. I think of spring as being full of life, color, and joy - the time of new beginning and hope for the future.

The background for this piece was painted using Golden acrylics - then I gave life to it using photo images of flowers, butterflies that I enhanced with Derwent Inktense pencils, and a vintage greeting card image of a cardinal.

There is a bit of a story about the main character in this piece. It features a male Eastern Bluebird, or Sialia Sialis, which is perched on an implied wire overlooking the scenery. He is done in watercolor on watercolor paper. The interesting thing is, I painted this in 1978 when I was 16 years old in a summer-school art class. The theme for the project focused on local birds and I used to see plenty of them when I lived on a farm in Howell, Michigan. I saw them less frequently here in the Lansing area, but they have always been a favorite of mine. Rendering the bird was easy, but I couldn't place him in a setting, so I left him alone. He remained for all these years tucked away inside my portfolio, which I've lugged all over the world - just a bluebird on a perch with a white background. He never faded or lost his luminosity and I thought he was very appropriate for one of my collages - especially this one with the vivid colors and the theme.

I had painted the background for this in 2005 and considered it finished, however, last month I pulled the bird out of the portfolio and the proverbial lightbulb went off. Here is the result.