Deceleration - Peruvian Blue footed Boobie Acrylic and Oil Pastel-June 2025 - Audio Description box below

Acrylic and Oil Pastel-June 2025

Audio Description for Blind person's usage - by Sophie Coppenhall, Deceleration - Peruvian Blue Footed Boobie, This oil and acrylic composition depicts a bird in flight over a rolling sea. The canvas is in landscape orientation, almost square in shape. In the centre of the canvas, a white and grey bird in flight hovers over waves in the ocean with its wings outspread against a pale cloudy sky. The bird’s belly is facing towards the audience, the bottoms of its blue feet and undersides of its wings showing. The bird’s head is turned away slightly on a 45 degree profile, so that the side of its dark greyish-black beak is visible. Its beak is large compared to the size of its head, elongated and pointed at the tip. At the very top of its beak is a small, rounded, yellow eye with a black pupil in its centre. The bird’s head is rounded, with white and pale grey-beige feathers which appear frilled at the edges. Its right wing is slightly raised behind its head, reaching almost the very top of the canvas. The wing is painted in thick strokes of taupe-beige and dark grey at its very tip. Its left wing is spread out towards the right edge of the canvas, with the top feathers painted in a bold, bluish slate grey, and lower feathers beneath painted in mixed dashes of colour in taupe-beige, medium greys and light dabs of charcoal grey. The left wing is slightly bent in the middle to create a defined arched shape. The bird’s head and slim torso are painted in bright tones of cream-white and light grey-beige to give dimension and shape to areas of shadow. Its feet extend out from its torso, with thin pale duck-egg-blue coloured legs stretched out and blue webbed feet facing flat towards the audience. Lines of the bird’s toes are painted in bluish-grey. Below its feet, the bird’s tail feathers are streamlined and tipped with bluish slate-grey and dappled charcoal grey, similar to the tops and tips of its wings. The bird is hovering above a sea painted in broad strokes of different shades of blue in the painting’s lower third. Some strokes are thick and bold, while others are sheer and are interspersed with strands of bare white canvas. At the very bottom of the composition, wavy, curved strokes of deepest navy blue, ultramarine and cornflower blue create a body of water, broken by long, curved white lines between them. Further into the distance, the sea recedes into paler blues, greyish and slightly transparent. The brushstrokes are wider and straighter, giving the impression of calmer waters flowing towards the horizon. Above the sea, the sky occupies the top two thirds of the background, painted in soft, subtle strokes of palest cream-white and pale powdery lilac-blue. The colours are clustered together, giving the impression of soft, flowing clouds spreading across the sky.