Lucky Duck

Lucky Duck — Original acrylic on canvas, 61 cm × 76 cm

This painting has a secret. Tucked onto the white ceramic French Bulldog bookend — borrowed from the wonderful Sugar & Nice café on Beaufort Street, Perth — is a tiny yellow rubber duck, fixed on with blu tack.

At Sugar & Nice, a little girl comes in each morning with her mum and hunts for the duck hiding somewhere on the café’s gloriously busy counter. When she finds it, she hides it somewhere new. In the afternoon, another little girl arrives and does exactly the same thing. They have never met and yet they are playing the same game, leaving little acts of delight for a stranger.

Hearing this story makes my mind slip back to my childhood in the 1970's and how we used to have to use our imaginations to amuse ourselves. This gives me hope that the kids nowadays still find creativity in their lives in a totally analogue way. 

Lucky Duck is a painting about someof the books and artists that feed a creative life and the small, joyful connections that make ordinary days extraordinary.

Acrylic on canvas · 61 cm × 76 cm · Ready to hang