After finishing my ‘green people’ I’m about to start work again on this kingfisher painting. I intend to try and leave the background quite blurred and try and get a lot of detail into the Kingfisher. They really are the most beautiful of birds, with iridescent plumage. It’s acrylic on canvas as usual. About 10 x 14 inches? Maybe slightly bigger than that. Might do some more to it today.
I think you can see these down on the river Trent, although I don’t know if there is too much fish there for them.
Mallaband-Brown 
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
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I don’t know what to say. I’d never heard that, so intense and beautiful.
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