Peacock and Fantastic Bird

Description for blind and low-vision visitors

A horizontal composition dominated by one large bird standing on a dark green mound along the bottom edge. Its body is a broad oval built from rows of overlapping scallops, laid like roof tiles, each one filled with fine curling lines in cream, pink, pale blue, red and green and closed by a beaded black and white edge. Above the body sits a great rounded wing worked in blue, black, grey and wine red, covered in dense coils and cloud-like scrolls; below it a second bank of feathers falls in long blue and black stripes. To the right the tail opens into a fan of six broad plumes in blue, red, cream, black and green, each with a white central shaft and a red or green eye-spot set at its base. Two pink legs, hatched with fine strokes, come down to black claws that grip the mound. From the body a long dark neck rises to the left, banded with rows of dots and studded with white six-pointed stars; it ends in a green and black head with one large round eye, an open black beak and a red tongue, crowned by a crest of five red leaf-shaped plumes veined in green. A second head appears at the far left, pale blue and speckled with white stars, with a red and black beak, a spiral eye and a fanned crest of cream and yellow blades. Two black hand-shaped claws reach out from the middle of the body. A small butterfly hovers at the left, its wings blue, green and black over a striped red body, above a cut green branch whose two sawn ends show as pale cream ovals. The ground is ochre, filled edge to edge with rows of short dashes in cream, white, pale blue and green that ripple across the sheet in wide bands. The signature is painted in black at the lower center, on the open ground.