The Rooster

He strides head-on toward the viewer, claiming the full height of the canvas with theatrical confidence, caught mid-step on one wiry leg, the other foot lifted and clenched. The picture has the swagger of a state portrait and the tension of an ambush.

His body is a storm of near-black plumage: charcoal, umber and slate dragged in long, urgent strokes, shot through with flickers of crimson and rust as if embers were burning beneath the feathers. Silvery hackles cascade around the neck in dry, feathered sweeps that read almost as motion blur. And then the head, the chromatic detonation of the piece: a scarlet comb and pendulous wattles built up in thick, wet impasto, framing one small, fierce, intelligent eye.

The ground beneath him is a bravura abstract passage: diagonal scumbles of silver-grey and bone scratched with rust-red dashes like scattered straw, tilting the floor toward the viewer and pushing the bird forward out of the frame. Touches of hidden teal cool the margins and keep the near-monochrome body alive.

Defiant and faintly comic, a barnyard general on parade, yet painted with the gravity of expressionist portraiture.