Hand built ceramic hummingbird sculpture with ink finish, full orange-red gorget, perched on a black stoneware outcrop.
That throat isn't paint sitting on the surface, it's built up in overlapping scale, the way the feathers actually lie. A hummingbird's gorget only shows colour when the angle is right, iridescence rather than pigment, but a sculpture doesn't get to wait for the light to turn. So the colour is fixed here instead, the whole throat caught mid-flash rather than the fraction of a second it usually is.
Bronze through the back and crown, pale through the belly, the long straight bill reading almost architectural against the small body. Perched low on a rough dark outcrop rather than a branch, weight forward, the stillness of a bird holding territory rather than feeding.
Built in stoneware, worked in ink rather than the usual underglaze and oxide wash, layered to get the gorget's built-up, overlapping texture. Eye set in glass-black. Perch left raw and dark against the warmth of the bird.
Stoneware, ink. 17 x 8.5 x 8.5 cm. 2026. Commissions welcome.
