BRUSHING UP ON birds
By Joe Misuraca Photos Yanni
W
hen Mount Martha local, David Freedman, 76, retired from being a rural general surgeon at age 72 to battle cancer, he stopped using surgical instruments and took up paintbrushes. But, it wasn’t the first time he’d picked up a paintbrush. It had always been his lifetime hobby, and had now become his primary passion as a retiree. While working in Swan Hill, he would paint in his spare time to cope with the stresses of his job, and found it to be “a great release” and to have given him a “sense of freedom”. “I had this outlet of painting and, whenever possible, I would head out into the Mallee, and paint the Mallee roads and the river, the Murray River, which I loved,” he said. He has done most of his painting plein-air, a French term meaning ‘painting out in the open’. His first book about painting was based on this practice, and involved tips on using oil, pastel and watercolours. Victoria’s lockdowns dashed his plans to write a book specifically about painting with watercolours. So, instead, David painted within seven months between 260 to 270 birds. He began this endeavour in June 2020.
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24 | PENINSULA
David lives on a two acre property in Mt Martha and he was inspired to do this when he noticed a variety of birds had flocked to his two-acre property from mainland Victoria due to the 2019-2020 bushfire season. “I saw all these birds that I hadn’t seen before in the trees,” he said. The Eastern Rosellas had eggs and baby chicks, and this fascinated him. “I hadn’t painted a bird before, but I fell in love with the birds, and I knew how to paint, and it was a process where I got better as I went along.” After completing all these paintings, he had a lightbulb moment and thought about putting them in a book. The problem was that he didn’t know much about birds, and he “didn’t want it to be like an encyclopaedia or a field bird book”. During a phone conversation with his stepsister, David discovered his stepbrother, Richard Steele, who hadn’t seen in 60 years, knew a lot about birds and enjoyed writing. This was an opportunity for them to reconnect. David selected 240 of his paintings to include in this new book, and Richard drew upon his knowledge of birds to write in what continued next page...
August 2021