Lora and her friends (“Lora et ses amies”) is a series by Swiss visual artist Nives Widauer. i actually saw the imagery, before knowing anything about the artist, and was like – “budgies with legs? i’m in!” well, first of all, they’re parrots. the original images are from Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots by Edward Lear. Widauer adds feminine legs to them – colourful extensions of the parrots’ plumage – and gives the works female names from literature, her circle of friends and from fantasy. great ones, of course: Moira, Marianna, Luna, Generosa, Valery, Cosmea, Roxanne, Celia…
People have a particular fascination for parrots. They are known to be highly intelligent. Their life expectancy is roughly that of humans, but it is their capacity for imitating voices, of ‘talking’, that forms a mirror-image relationship to people. The blaze of colour of the plumage and the feathers of the birds portrayed are taken by the artist as the starting point, and she adds individual human extremities to the illustrations. Widauer gives the works titles with women’s names from literature, from her circle of friends or from fantasy, thus combining the real with the fictitious, and emotional camouflage with emotional sensitivity.
she also has a great apartment in an old building in Vienna. see more of her work at her website.