birds

There is a moment — a flash of iridescence, a held breath before flight, a bird utterly still in the winter light — that Kelly Leahy Radding has spent a lifetime chasing. Every bird in this gallery was encountered in the wild: observed, studied, carried home in memory and sketchbook, and then translated into paint with extraordinary care.

Radding works on surfaces most artists never touch. Her bird paintings on calfskin vellum are painted in dry brush watercolor — a slow, meditative technique built from dozens of thin transparent layers, each applied in short strokes and stipples until the surface glows with a luminosity that seems to come from within. On gessoed panel in egg tempera, the effect is different but equally arresting: cool, jewel-like, precise. These are not quick paintings. A single work may take weeks.

The result is bird art that rewards stillness — work that reveals more the longer you look, and that changes in different light throughout the day. To own one is to have a living piece of the natural world on your wall.

A Selection of Sold artwork