Painting Birds
It facinates me watching beautiful color mixture of birds, especially the color on the wings. I capture those vibrant colors in many of my impressionist paintings. The multi-color combinations reflect many dimentions when the sun shines on them. Birds from blue jay, cardinal, dove, hoopoe to kingfisher are my favorite subjects in the “Wings” series. I also get much pleasure looking at bird paintings done by naturalist artist such as John James Audubon. His paintings of birds, I think, are both artistic and scientific. They are the best in the world. In his book, Birds of America, the paintings show excellent examples of humanity’s relationship with birds that exist since the early days of cave dwellings. John Audubon’s paintings continue to inspire worldwide bird-watching groups for centuries. This week there is a slide show of beautiful bird paintings from water color of a male ruff dated around 1788 to a golden eagle and scarlet ibis painted by John James Audubon himself in 1837. I enjoy watching them, and recommend to those interested not to miss seeing this particular slide set.
Filed under Art, Environment | Comment (0)Human Rights Day
On 10 December, we celebrate together the sixty years of hard work since the 1948 adoption by the United Nations General Assembly, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. From the birth of the United Nations in 1945, one of its goals is to define and protect the rights and freedom of every human beings regardless of race, sex, language or religion. This has been written in the UN Charter. The word “sex” was added into it by the few women who were present when the Charter was drafed aiming to advance the political and legal status of women in international law. Eversince, countless numbers of women around the world have succeeded in producing legal documents in many languages to affirm dignity and justice for women based on the equality of men and women. By that one action, they have permanently outlawed sex as a basis for discrimination.
Women organizations and State representatives at the UN Commission on the Status of Women not only have helped us in shaping the language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but they have also used effectively the principles of the Declaration as a basis for agenda of work of the Commission during the last few decades. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which came into being in 1979, owed its life and success to the determination and efforts of those women activists who came earlier on the working scene at the United Nations.
I want to use the theme for the Human Rights Day celebration, “Dignity and Justice for All of Us” to make a special note of appreciation and commendation to the accomplisments of the 110 international experts of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. We have benefited from their grueling hard work in going through the reading of pages and pages of State Party reports and in them making the general recommendations for the fulfilment of state obligations to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. In 1992, this Committee of experts had adopted the far-reaching general recommendation that requires national reports to include statistical data on the incidence of violence against women, information on the provision of services for victims, and legislative and other measures taken to protect women against violence such as sexual harassment at the workplace, abuse in family and sexual violence. By their pioneering work, millions of women around the world have gained dignity and justice in their every day life.