Big Daddy

Big, Big Daddy

Big Daddy is the coolest rooster I have ever met. Not that I have met too many roosters or been around them much, but Big Daddy is definitely the hottest and coolest rooster out there. His splendor manifests in his beauty, his gentleness with his lady companions, and his mildness when he picks food from my hand. He is always happy to see me and runs in my direction every time he hears my call. And he is not even my rooster! Big Daddy and his female companions live in the house next door; they are “The Chicks Next Door”.

Chicken Butts

My fascination with roosters and chickens started early in life. Part out of guilt, part out of interest in their beauty and behaviour. When I was a preschooler we had chicks roaming our backyard. Now, back then, my father had not found the joy of yard work and our grass was as tall as me. I can’t remember which game my sisters and I were playing, what I do remember though is that I was zig-zagging in the tall grass, running, trying to catch someone or most probably, avoiding being caught. Neither happened. Instead I felt a warm fuzzy crunch under my foot. What had I done? Oh no!!! The horror of death!

Childhood painting of a rooster

The pain in my heart from the guilt I felt was more than a little girl could take. This stayed with me for a long time, and if I dared to forget, my sister would remind me of my horrible deed. I guess due to this event, I often painted and drew chickens and roosters throughout my childhood. As a fifth grader, I entered a painting competition at school. I decided to do a painting of a rooster I had drawn a few times before. To my surprise, my painting won first place. This honor propelled me to want to be a painter. For some reason, after my golden moment, I never painted chickens and roosters again until I moved to Maxeys to open the Bed and Breakfast and met Big Daddy and his clan. Meeting them was love at first sight!

This love became the series “The Chicks Next Door”. The series exalts Big Daddy’s personality referencing the millennial generation’s idea that each of us has a “perfect”, golden persona. In the series the patriarch, Big Daddy, is the protagonist. He has a larger than life personality and he seems full of himself, but that is just a show or how the great Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernandez wrote , “Buche y Pluma no mas”, here sung by Myrta Sylva. He is a gentleman, very kind and generous with the ladies he guards, who consider him their protector.

I am a portrait painter and personality is what I look for in a subject and Big Daddy has personality “para dar y regalar” (to give and gift)!