BLACK STORK (2022) Painting by Dmitrii Kastalskii

Watercolor painting by Moscow artist Dmitrii Kastalskii, member of SABA, “Black Stork”.
"Birds of Prey" series.
Animal painting, figurative art.
Size 36x48 cm, when framed in a passe-partout 40x50 cm
2022

Watercolor work was done on 100% cotton Canson Fontenay paper with a density of 300 g/m².
The painting is suitable both for interior decoration and as a gift.

EXHIBITIONS

In 2022 and 2023, the painting participated in exhibitions of the “Disappearing Beauty of Russia” project:

— St. Petersburg, Russia, Great Hall of the Green House of the Botanical Garden named after. Peter the Great;

— Irkutsk, Russia, Regional Art Museum (museum-estate of V. P. Sukachev);

— Blagoveshchensk, Russia, Youth Library named after. A. P. Chekhov in partnership with the Amur branch of the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Science of the Botanical Garden-Institute of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences;

— Yakutsk, Russia, SMART library named after. N.D. Neustroeva. The exhibition was held as part of the Knowledge Festival “Winter Garden 2.0” with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives.

It turns out that the perception of the black stork as a precious stone shimmering in different colors arose not only for me.
Here is the story “The Black Stork” by Nikolai Sladkov, where he describes similar impressions.

“The black stork is a forest hermit. Few have seen it in the forest. It doesn’t like to show itself off, except when it’s soaring in the sky. And even then it’s high, you can’t really see it from below.

The black stork is not so black. Its belly, sides, and underwings are snow-white. The beak is red, the long legs are scarlet. It is black only in the shade, but in the sun it glows either green, blue, or even crimson. In a cage, he immediately loses this reflection of free life.

The stork strides importantly among the shadows and glare of the forest and, like a precious stone, changes color all the time. But you can only see this up close and only in the wild.

I once swam in a deep forest lake. The fish fry pinched their sides with their lips, and I scattered them so that they would not be tickled. For some reason, it was especially hard on the legs, which were shod with red flippers. The fry swarmed around them like mosquitoes. When I looked up, I noticed three black storks on the other side. They stood knee-deep in the water, dipping their beaks into the water.

Of course, they immediately noticed me, took off, and disappeared into the thicket of branches. Real forest birds! On the shore where they trampled, white blots and burning footprints remained. And in the water where they stood, fry swarmed.

I remembered the red flippers.
Could it be that the storks were deliberately luring the fry with their red legs and noses? The fry themselves climbed into the mouth. I dipped the red flippers into the water, and the fry again clung to them like ants. Maybe the storks actually thought of this, even though they grew up in the wild forest?"

Related themes

NatureBirdWatercolorPaintingStork