The Creative World of Orni Sapiens

Janet STRAYER
Jan 18
2 min read

Cafe Society painting in Orni Sapiens series by Janet Strayer — *Café Societ*y painting in *Orni Sapiens series* by Janet Strayer

Ever since a disastrous house fire, I've been walking a tightrope, unsure about what was once so familiar. All living things were thankfully unharmed by the fire, but so many memories, mementos, cherished objects and paintings were in ashes, as was our beautiful home on Saturna Island.

Why even bother painting again? Answer for me: because I'd fall into a huge dark hole if I didn't. Just drawings at first of bird-people walking a tightrope (see From the Flames post ). I gradually started upon paintings of bird-people. A new species I've called "Orni Sapiens" flew into my life and opened an entire creative world that I wanted and needed to explore and manifest in art. It is a wonder-filled world, shown animated on my landing page.

I'm now on this imaginative journey further into the world of Orni Sapiens, a world inhabited by bird-people and their stories, both personal and universal. From poignant to humorous, these artworks envision humans with affinities towards birds, humans in the process of transitioning into Orni Sapiens, birds with human personalities and attributes, humans with bird-like attributes and insights.

Orni Sapiens presents a world in which humans, birds, and bird-people interact as companions depicted throughout historical epochs and in contemporary settings. Notably, the artist-bird connection is apparent in several works, emphasizing birds as symbols of creative inspiration made manifest in artistic reality. .

These bird-people keep flying by, lifting my spirits, piquing my curiosity, and inspiring my artwork. As they manifest, I'll post the small to mid-size works at here and the larger ones here.

For me, they've become psychological and spiritual symbols of our wishes to fly, to escape the heaviness of ground-bound limitations, to soar upwards, to defy borders and boundaries, to see both close and far from a unique perspective, to fly freely in our imagination with wings of inspiration. The anthropomorphic "bird-people" that abound the folklore of many cultures seem reflective of such wishes.