Ang Winkle Art, Sabadeco (2026)

04/03/2026

tl;dr: Ang leaving FB but *active* on ig: https://www.instagram.com/angwinkleart

To my dear friends, steadfast supporters, and followers: I'm so grateful for all the love, kind comments, and encouragement this organically curated community has given me over the past several years. It is no understatement to say that, without your confidence in my talent and offerings, my art would never be what it is today. As of this writing in 2026, intended to be my final update on this platform, I can finally say that I am not only an artist, I love my work. I am taking my art more seriously in several respects, so you'll notice that I changed my page name and instagram handles to something much more boring. Don't worry - my art still prominently features birbs.

The current politiosociowtf environment in the US caused me to with draw from Facebook. I had gotten so unwell that I could not make art of any kind for months, which is a scary proposition for me. After unplugging, I have (mercifully! glory to grebes!) started working seriously again: I have created a couple new pieces and have updated many older digital pieces in advance of a printing run in the spring. Once I return to Holland in the spring, I will also resume oil painting, so there is so much more to come!

I will offer a new work here for tax, but if you are keen to continue supporting my work, please follow me on instagram instead. I will NOT be returning to this page after this post. However, I have been sharing recent art - and even a few fun personal adventures - over on my ig page, so if you're interested in keeping up with me and my art, clicky here: https://www.instagram.com/angwinkleart

22/08/2025

“Summer Hals” - oil on canvas

I spent the last several weeks in Amsterdam for my summer holiday, and I made a LOT of art!! For now, I will just share the rest of the series for the Zeeburg neighborhood art show.

To accompany The Merry Drinker, I created my version of two other Hals portraits, replacing the humans with birds commonly found here on the Amsterdam canals. His work was masterful but looked effortless. he often had little bits of humor on display, so I like to think he would approve of my creations.

Share with anyone who needs a goose playing a mandolin.

18/08/2025

“The Merry Drinker - grey heron”

Right before I left for my summer holiday in Holland, I had drinks with my island group of friends - mostly Dutchies of course, but always sprinkled with friends or visitors from abroad. I had been making so much digital art before I left that It came up in conversation with my friends, and I ended up passing around my iPad to show off a few of the more complex pieces I’ve done lately.

One of the folks sitting at the table took my ipad and stared intently at my recent nod to Rembrandt - you know the one where all the surgeons were replaced with parrots, which still amuses me endlessly. He clearly enjoyed it too, and I think he also wanted to be impressed but wasnt sure he should be. 😂😜

I saw his hesitation and recognized it instantly, because I have struggled with it myself for years. “Does this count? Is this real art? Am I actually any good at this, or did I just find some cheat codes?”

He then asked me: “can you do this on other mediums? Can you do this in acrylic?”

I have no current intention to return to acrylic for portraiture - I will reserve it for signs and driftwood projects for now, but I looked him in the eye and assured him I could do this in any medium. To be clear, i do NOT have the training and experience to do anything masterful in oil. I had not touched it before last fall and basically dropped it again until my spring holiday in Italy.

But I’d never been more sure or confident than I was at that moment, and I knew I would tackle something big. Soon. But in oil, like the Dutch masters I’d been studying.

Then a local (Amsterdam) friend messaged me and said — I s**t you not - there is a small neighborhood art show being organized, and the director loves your work. You know.. no pressure but if you might like to … (I didn’t let her finish. I instantly told her I would do not just one but a COLLECTION of pieces for it. 😳😳😳)

I went to the art supply store and bought three large canvases. Over the past two weeks, I have alternated through them, and the first is now done and ready for its first virtual viewings.

My work was inspired by one of Frans Hals’ most famous pieces, “The Merry Drinker,” which is housed at the Rijksmuseum here in Amsterdam. To link Hals work with my own, i replaced his man with a bird found in Zeeburg, where the neighborhood show is being hosted. I consider this my first ever real masterpiece, and i hope bird lovers everywhere (but especially Amsterdam) will chuckle and enjoy.

I will finish the other two this week before i return to Bonaire. Wait for it!!!!

15/08/2025

“Texel”

I have been making heaps of art while on holiday. I’m still trying to figure out what is so magical about travels that seems to unlock new artist levels, but I know better than to look at a gift horse in the mouth, as it was said where i grew up.

My summer holiday in the Netherlands has been truly wonderful. Festivals, friends, and amazing weather. And in between, I have been working on several different large oil paintings for a special show in Zeeburg, mijn buurt weg van mijn buurt, and will share that with you in the coming days!

Today’s work is a digital piece that I have been doing in the evenings when it’s too dark for oil paint. My best girl and I were there for the weekend, and I was so inspired to create a piece that felt like that experience. This is the result.

If you’d like to see some of the photos of the scenery that inspired this piece, you can check those out on my Instagram.

21/07/2025

I'm thrilled to share with you today my latest piece, inspired by Jan Steen's "As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young," created around 1670 in the Netherlands.

The saying "warns" about bad behaviour by adults leading to later bad conduct by children, but the artist illustrates this in his signature cheeky style that I adore so much. He depicts the woman at the far left (with her cleavage scandalously showing) having her glass of wine topped up while a laughing man is teaching children to smoke a pipe. In the original, the laughing man is the father of the children, Steen himself.

My rendition replaces the "loose woman" with a hawkhead parrot, and her glass is being held by the dusky parrot behind her. I used pics of some of my friend Linda P's newly hatched and juvenile macaws to replace the two children and the baby -- and must say that part really tickles me. I replaced the father with a yellow shouldered amazon parrot who is, in the father's stead, corrupting the children. Trust me when I tell you that this is bang on for amazon parrot behaviour.

This is - by far - the most complex and time-consuming piece I've ever created. Procreate's stats show I worked on it for over 64 hours, and it has over 109k penstrokes. I had an absolute *ball* having to stop periodically to share the WIP with Caroline because it had cracked me up so much. If you've a favorite bit, free free to pop it in the comments!!

groetjes, ang

15/07/2025

"The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp" - I offered a WIP view of this piece a few weeks ago, intending only to update the co**se. But I ended up doing a fair bit more than that. According to the Procreate app I used for it, the final tracked time on this work is 39 hours and 16 minutes, and the piece is comprised of 51,122 strokes of my pen!

Rembrandt's original piece was created for the board of surgeons in Amsterdam in 1632, and the piece is probably one of the first where he fully signed his name. Previous works bore the initials RHL "Rembrandt Harmenszoon of Leiden." In the day, if an artist signed a piece, it was often added to the upper lefthand corner. In this piece, you can see he worked his signature into the background, as if it were barely legible writing on a scroll pinned to the wall. So in that spirit, I replaced his signature with my own in the background instead of "signing it" at the bottom. You'll find a few other new details.. Hope you'll enjoy.. again! More! Still!

08/07/2025

"The Infancy of Zeus"

We're back at Mauritshaus for this Nicolaes Pietersz Berchem-inspired piece of the same name. In the original, the artist captures the story of Zeus's early childhood, where he had been placed with a king's daughter for safety... you know, given his father was threatening to eat him and all.

All the humans were replaced with macaws, thanks to inspiration pics from Macaws And More. The "babysitter" in my version is actually Sophie's Abby, so if you're a follower of Linda's, you get an extra easter egg. Hope you enjoy!

05/07/2025

"African woman"

My bestie has been in Africa for several weeks for the celebration of her brother's wedding. When she first arrived in Nairobi, she bought souvenirs -- and a selfie -- from women who were selling wares on the border. The women come from both Kenya and Tanzania and pool their monies at the end of every day so that no one is short-changed.

When I first saw the knowing smile, soft eyes, and deep fissure of her skin, I desperately wanted to know her story. So I set out to paint her on Juneteenth. I often don't work in a real linear fashion -- as you've seen, I produced other pieces in between. Portraits still take a long time for me to consider.. I often set them aside and return over and over until I finally feel the person returning my gaze properly.

Hope you'll enjoy.

ang

03/07/2025

WIP - ???

I don't usually show works in progress but thought you might like to see how these complicated pieces are constructed.

I first do the background - floors, walls, sky, ground, whatever, then mark out my perspective lines. Having done some of that, you can begin to see the structure of the room forming.

I then added the window detail, then the bird cage and bird perch. On the ground, next to the pottery, I've created the foot and arm of a chair that will ultimately be covered with fabric.

Anyone recognize the piece yet?? (We're back at Mauritshuis)

01/07/2025

"Vanitasportret van de kakatoe" -

Today's piece is a slight diversion - we're in the same era, but the inspiration did not come from the dutch collection at Mauritshuis; rather, the original Antoine van Steenwinckel piece resides at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. But much like the earlier Gossaert piece I revised, where the bird talons looked like they were resting on the edge of the frame, this piece was also a little cheeky. This self-portrait still-life was common in the 1600s, and the hourglass and skull were commonly used symbols to illustrate the fleeting nature of life.

Onlookers of the original piece have long pondered whether the holder of the mirror is another person (perhaps a studio assistant?) or a younger version of artist, being shown a glimpse of his future. Either way, the mirror positioned on the table creates a "trompe l'oeil" -- a realistic view of a side table. The mirror reflects back at the viewer, but we see the artist instead of ourselves.

In this case, the artist is the Galah, and the onlooker an umbrella cockatoo - my muse for the latter was my friend Sugar from The Icarus Foundation's Chesapeake Parrot Sanctuary ;)

May we remember life is short, and we should stop to enjoy glimpses of ourselves from time to time!

ang

Ang Winkle Art

04/03/2026

22/08/2025

18/08/2025

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21/07/2025

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