All images © Cindy Schnackel, all rights reserved. Do not pin my work to Pinterest.

Acrylic on reclaimed stretched cotton canvas, palette knife painting, 60 × 48 inches (5 × 4 feet).

The story of the Giant Coffee Drinking Chicken began as a large but well made canvas with a pink landscape that a neighbor was throwing out on a big junk collection day. My husband was walking to the bus stop, spotted it, and called me on his cell phone. The thinking at the time was that both of us would just play around with it. I went and got it, took it to our patio, and cleaned it up. It was in good shape. I coated it with gesso. The pink landscape was thinly painted and appeared to be a 1980s style and color theme. The painter had embellished it here and there with gobs of acrylic gel medium which they’d formed into stiff peaks like cake decorations; I used a razor blade to trim some of these down.
Over the next few months, my husband and I mindlessly applied paint . “Art therapy.” There was no plan, but we thought eventually we’d make it into a big abstract landscape for our house.
Then one day I had the idea to make it a chicken. I called my husband at work and asked if he had any objection, (he didn’t). I created the background and chicken mostly using palette knives. My husband and I both love birds, and drink a lot of coffee, so the piece very much personifies us.