Roosters crow at the break of dawn, even when they can’t see the sun. During the deepest parts of an early 80s winter, while I lived in England, I encountered a population of roosters that, regardless of how dreary a day may have been, would celebrate each morning and brighten things up with their plumes.
Nine miles an hour – that’s top speed of a rooster in a rush. This particular rooster is one of my more abstract depictions, but he is still unmistakable. The feathers are depicted using fast strokes from left to right in bright greens and yellows. You can see his out-of-time wings flapping over his head, and sickle whirling behind like jet flames. His dark beak and one eye are visible against his tomato-red wattle and comb. He leads with a proud chest out, his legs and feet a flash movement.
Multidirectional strokes create the look of overlapping geometric panels in warm Earth tones in the background; some even appear to lean together into peaks that suggest roofs. One would be justified in imagining it as a blurred scene of farm buildings and barn roofs behind the rapid rooster. He fills the 40x20 frame, scampering through from left to right and is most assuredly, quite frantically, headed… someplace. It might be fun to follow him.
