Behind Birds of the Amazon

Birds of the Amazon is our first series: six birds from the forests of Central and South America, each painted rather than photographed, printed on the same warm natural-white stock. This is a short note on the six, and why these ones.

We wanted colour that earns its place on a wall. Not loud for its own sake, but the kind of colour that changes with the light through the day and still reads as calm once it's up. These six gave us that range, from the flat red of the Macaw to the quiet turquoise of the Motmot.

Scarlet Macaw

The one everyone knows, and the anchor of the series. A big block of pure red running into bands of yellow and blue at the wing. It carries the most colour of the six, which is exactly why it works framed in plain black: the frame becomes a line and lets the red do the talking.

Toco Toucan

The largest toucan, and mostly a study in that outsized orange bill against black plumage. It's the most graphic of the set, nearly a logo, and it holds a room at almost any size. A favourite for kitchens and kids' rooms where a bit of humour helps.

Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock

Vivid orange from head to tail, with the strange half-moon crest that sits over the beak like a helmet. A bird most people have never seen, which is half the appeal; it reads as a warm colour field first and a bird second. Pairs beautifully with the Macaw.

Amazonian Motmot

The quiet one. Soft greens and turquoise with a black mask, and the distinctive tail that ends in two bare racket tips. Where the Macaw shouts, the Motmot settles a wall. It's the piece we reach for when a room already has enough going on.

Royal Flycatcher

A plain brown bird hiding a spectacular secret: a fan-shaped crest of red, blue and yellow it raises only rarely. We painted it mid-display. It's the subtlest sell of the six and the one that rewards a second look, which makes it a good hallway piece where people pass it slowly.

Crimson Topaz

One of the largest hummingbirds, and iridescent: deep crimson body, a throat that shifts from green to gold as you move past it. Painting iridescence on matte paper is its own puzzle, and this is the piece where the natural-white stock does the most quiet work, giving the colour somewhere soft to sit.

The series as a set

They're painted to hang together. All six share the same 3:4 portrait shape, so they stack and grid cleanly in any combination, and the palettes were tuned as a family rather than one at a time. Three of them make an easy feature wall; all six make a statement. More series follow through the year, but this is where it started.