Birds On a Wire Wall Art

Birds On a Wire Wall Art

The usual mistake is buying it for the birds. The birds are the small dark punctuation; the composition is the wire — a long horizontal line running the full width of the image, sometimes two or three of them with a slight sag between poles. That line is what your room has to accommodate, and it is why this subject goes wrong on the wrong wall.

Horizontals want company or clear space. Above a sofa, a sideboard or a headboard, the wire echoes the top edge of the furniture and the whole arrangement settles. On a narrow pier between two windows, or above a tall bookcase, the same line is cut off and looks cramped. Judge the wall before the image.

Spacing of the birds is the second thing to look at, and it separates a considered image from a filler one. Evenly spaced birds look like a pattern; irregular clusters with a gap or two, and one bird slightly apart from the rest, look like something that actually happened. The eye reads the gap as meaning, whether or not any was intended.

Most versions are near-monochrome: dark silhouettes on a pale sky, sometimes with a wash of dusk colour. That makes them easy to place and easy to pair, but it also means they need clean contrast to survive a busy room. Against patterned wallpaper the birds disappear into the pattern and only the wire survives.

Before you hang it, hold the piece up and check the wire against your skirting board and window heads. If it sits parallel to both, good. If it lands at a slight angle to either, the eye will catch it every time you walk in, and no amount of getting the frame level will settle the argument.