Wisconsin artist Rebecca Korth hopes to bring “levity and happiness into people’s lives” through her brightly colored paintings, she wrote in an email.
In her still-life painting “Bluebird, Barletts & Cara Caras,” Korth features the quintessential harbinger of happiness, an Eastern bluebird. The picture is full of uplifting color: vibrant oranges, and blues that seem to sing together with the chartreuse of the pears. Korth’s bluebird perches tentatively on a pile of Cara Cara navel oranges along with a Bartlett pear in her mother’s crystal cut-glass bowl.
"Bluebird, Barletts & Cara Caras," 2019, by Rebecca Korth. Oil on panel; 30 inches by 24 inches. Finalist in the "14th International ARC Salon (2019–2020)" and an honorable mention in the "Southwest Art Artistic Excellence Competition (2019)." Rebecca Korth
Not only does the bluebird’s presence bring happiness to the picture but its colors harmonize the whole painting. Korth chose the bluebird because its orange chest feathers reflect the Cara Cara fruit’s skin.
The bird’s striking blue feathers make the blue pattern of the Chinese vase pop. Additionally, the bird’s touch of white feathers highlights the lightness of the whole painting, as light dances and reflects throughout the scene set out on Korth’s quartz kitchen bench.
Korth was inspired to re-create the scene in her newly remodeled kitchen after she saw the way sunlight illuminated her mother’s crystal cut-glass bowl that was full of fruit.
Each painting Korth creates with a bird evokes a memory of her mother. The birds, she explains, “consistently started fluttering into my still-life paintings after my mother passed away. Many of my final memories with her involved watching the birds outside her bedroom window. The addition of the birds started as a way to cope with the loss of my mother and has now become a way for me to honor and keep her memory alive.”
Korth’s sincere wish is that her art evokes a smile or a positive memory for anyone touched by it. After all, she says, “There’s enough sadness in this world.”
To find out more about Rebecca Korth’s paintings, visit RebeccaKorth.com
