Sharon Moroney: Light as a Feather

“Light as a Feather brings together a series of soft pastel works that portray birds with faithful detail while placing them in compositions that feel quietly unexpected. Each piece draws the viewer into a close, almost private encounter—an angle just slightly off the conventional portrait, a framing that highlights a gesture, a tilt of the head, or the shimmering pattern of plumage often missed in passing.

Rather than abstracting their forms, the artist uses composition to gently reimagine how birds might be seen. Backgrounds fall away, space becomes simplified, and the viewer is invited into a vantage point that feels both intimate and contemplative. These shifts create a sense of quiet strangeness — not enough to unmoor the image, but enough to make the familiar appear newly alive.

Soft pastel is central to this transformation. The medium’s velvety surface and mutable edges allow the artist to layer colour with a delicacy that mirrors the structure of feathers themselves. Light seems to rest on the drawings, not simply illuminate them, enhancing the birds’ fragility while revealing their inner strength and quiet determination.

The works carry the echo of the artist’s childhood connection to birds — creatures that once represented freedom, escape, and the promise of worlds beyond reach. In Light as a Feather, that early sense of wonder is renewed through attention to detail and dynamic composition. Each bird becomes both itself and something more: a moment of stillness, a breath of lightness, an invitation to pause. Together, these images create an exhibition that celebrates the bird as both subject and symbol — recognisable, grounded, yet seen anew through the gentle, purposeful shift of perspective.”

– Sharon Moroney, 2026