Nature, beauty and following the 'crazy desire to create'

How Leila Jeffreys found her thing: taking incredible portraits of birds

Jul 20, 2023

One Wednesday evening in June, Sydney’s Australian Museum was festooned with birds, and not the usual still, stuffed collection. Flocks of budgies flew in the foyer, while galahs and cockatoos bathed in the theatre, feathers rippling with sparkling drops. In front of the stage, two birds waited, as attentive and curious as the crowd.

We were waiting for the remarkable Leila Jeffreys: the birds were hers, part of her range of luminous, beautiful portraits and videos. A photographic artist and activist, Leila had picked the panel for that evening’s talk, exploring the topic ‘What We Can Learn From Nature’ as part of the Vivid Ideas series.

Leila began with her story: a childhood immersed in nature and its creatures led into a photography degree and an urban life, working as a commercial photographer and photo editor. In 2008, she followed a deep urge to get back in touch with nature by going to Christmas Island to work on a research project. While tagging and photographing wild birds, she lamented how people missed the beauty, individuality and brilliance of these creatures, and decided to try to capture it in portraits.

Each of her works shows a bird’s personality and spirit, revealing quirky creatures of beauty and awe rather than what we usually see: a blur of movement or a speck in a tree. They show birds in a way that encourages people to pay attention to the flying creatures all around them, marvel and care. As it says on her site, her artwork is ‘a tribute to the act of looking closer’.

And she lets you look very closely indeed: the whiskers around a cut-throat finches beak; how a Gouldian finch’s plumage (pictured above) has the flow of liquid, the texture of soft, groomed fur . In her video artwork ‘Temple’, commissioned for last year’s Vivid, cockatoos and galahs fill the screen. Taking off, their bodies have the wings of angels and the power of gods. Feathers individually fluff and move, like puffy armoured plates. A cockatoo shakes its head, water droplets flying, its yellow crest whipping like rope in the hands of my eight-year old son.

Leila didn’t start photographing birds with the idea of building an artistic career; she began from ‘a crazy desire to create’. Over the years, her life has been made rich by following her curiosity and mad yearnings in relatively small and manageable ways – a month in Christmas Island; taking portraits of pet budgies – and seeing where it took her, again and again, growing in confidence along the way. When faced with decisions, she opted for those that expanded rather than diminished her; that gave her hope and energy rather than the easy, default options.

On the stage were two people she’d met along the way, members of her tribe. Tim Low is an ecologist and author she first met on Christmas Island all those years ago, while David Gandelman is an American spiritual teacher. They were there to give three perspectives on nature’s lessons: the artist’s, scientist’s and spiritualist’s.

Each was insightful and inspiring. Tim talked of the importance of appreciating the beauty that was all around us: rare native grass growing in a tiny, damp Redfern yard; how he bought his Brisbane house because of the huge old gum on the nature strip that pre-dated European colonisation. He told the story of typing inside one day when noisy mynas alerted him to action - a falcon flying overhead. Ten minutes later, the mynas called him back to witness nature’s drama when the same bird flew back, prey clutched tightly in its talons.

David’s lesson was different: if you slow down and listen, questions asked to nature provide answers. Trees teach us how to be grounded, put down roots, and connect. If you’re struggling with overthinking, clouds passing across the sun show the impermanence and unimportance of thoughts. Even being crapped on by a passing pigeon while puzzling over why his friend was a better teacher than him carried its own answer: stop shitting on yourself.

But it was Leila who stole the show. She was so comfortable on stage, in her skin, inspired and energised by her life and passions – you could feel her authenticity, energy and presence. She described her devastation following the 2020 bushfires that killed billions of birds, how processing this led to her upcoming show ‘The wound is where the light enters’ (on at the MARS Gallery in Melbourne from 27 July to 19 August). On a recent trip to Macquarie Island she sat on a beach and cried with joy as she was surrounded by thousands of king penguins.

Her lessons from nature were many. The first was that humans are bizarre – in their behaviour, as individuals and as a species. Another was that nature makes us better people, and that fixing the world starts with fixing us. Healthy humans care about the right things, and then amplify those things so they are heard.

Leila is a great place to start this newsletter, and not just because I want to show off her stunning work. She’s an example of how following your things, your curiosity and yearnings, can make your life better. It doesn’t have to be a big, bold example like hers. Instead, just changing little things - how you feel and interact with others; making space to think about what is important to you and planning how to get more of it in your day-to-day - can lead to your ordinary life having more shine, more purpose, more amplification of the good stuff.

Let’s begin.

Other musings

I’m just about to move house (three days to go!) and I’ve got mixed feelings. For the last 18 months we’ve lived in a shack on the hill that has a kitchen like a cupboard, bathrooms that haven’t been touched since the 1950s and is so flimsy that when you’re downstairs you can hear the cat jump off the couch in the lounge room above. The brush turkeys come inside and shit on the floor, there’s a huge monitor lizard that hangs around the bikes, and I’ve just found wasp nests growing on our furniture. It’s safe to say, the place ain’t for everyone.

The view from the deck - in a few days’ time it won’t be ours. But we’ve had sunsets like these for 18 months.

But… It also has the most glorious views over Sydney’s Middle Harbour and a magical garden with a waterfall, a bridge over a creek, tree ferns and camellias; there’s room for badminton, an inflatable spa, a zipwire and a death swing; and no neighbours in sight. It’s like being on holidays far, far away from the Sydney hustle. When you sit on the deck at night you can hear wallabies in the garden.

We’re not moving far and we’ve finally bought and the new place will be positively luxurious. It is really exciting.

But…it’s like moving from the secret garden to a suburban block.

One of the trees that hangs over the deck flowered last year and it was gorgeous. For an entire month the whole tree was decorated with delicate fuchsia blossoms, festooned with flocks of birds. Even for someone like me - a non-gardener, who knows little about birds or plants - it was just spectacular.

It made me sad to think I’d only see it once. And then one morning this week I stepped on the deck and the buds are budding and there are petals and it’s in flower. Just in time. I called the family out to see - they weren’t as excited as me - and now (thanks to a wonderful friend with a clever app) I even know what it is: a Taiwanese cherry. (I also understand the hype about Japan’s cherry blossom season.)

And I know what this tree does, for me at least: it makes me stop, appreciate and reflect, and be grateful for our time in this shack perched on the side of the hill.

A functional kitchen awaits!

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