Watercolors by Rebecca Bird: Extracting the Exquisite features finely executed works on paper which present images extracted from their original context and painted with meticulous detail onto white space. The subjects vary from birds and melting snow, which recall finely detailed botanical illustrations, to explosions divorced from a historical context and re-interpreted in monochromatic color.

The still lifes often resemble nature studies, paying fastidious attention to the contours and tones of the single, central image. All of the subjects, including some inorganic objects such as construction cranes, exist on an empty, white plane interrupted only by the contrasting form of the image rendered in articulate, suffusive color.

The explosion series, executed over a two year span, continues in this vein, focusing solely on images gathered from photographs of actual mushroom clouds, nuclear tests, and even artificial Hollywood explosions. They are extracted and replicated in paint as monotonal compositions, appearing as almost purely abstract shapes. By divorcing the images from their original context, each work takes on a new, and at times, ironic meaning—a mushroom cloud which emerges as something resembling a tree.