Cardinal Course. Leonard Koscianski, 42″x26″, oil on canvas, 2019.
Cardinal Course is painted with oil paint on linen canvas, all natural materials. It is Surreal and Postmodern in style. It appropriates two traditional painting types – Sports art, and Bird art, and then combines them to create an organic whole which is more challenging than its benign prototypes.
This painting is influenced by the artwork of Audubon, and Grant Wood. It is related to American Scene Painting of the mid Twentieth Century. While being detailed and well crafted, it is not “realistic”, but surreal. It is a dreamlike re-creation. The jarring juxtaposition of a large red cardinal against a golf course landscape creates an uneasy tension. What would be a placid scene has a sense of foreboding.
This painting was recently sold by the Meisel Gallery in NYC.