Poise

Poise compresses the flamingo into a compact silhouette, its head almost disappearing into the surrounding plumage. Set against an uninterrupted black ground, the bird is defined by contour and by shifts between pale pink, near-white, carmine, violet and red. These changes in hue and value give the rounded body its volume without relying on smooth, conventional modelling.

Longer feathers break away from the curved mass in narrow downward lines, introducing a sharper direction through the lower part of the form. Across the original, broad areas of colour give way to finer marks that follow the structure of the plumage, while dark intervals between individual feathers separate overlapping layers. The tightly folded pose is therefore held together by a combination of curved contour, directional marks and internal tonal breaks.