Day 22: Mother Owl

For my mom.

This is a portrait of the owl living in my parents’ yard in Montrose, Alabama.  They live right on Mobile bay and there are several wonderful old live oaks on the property (photo below). The owl sometimes swoops through the trees in the evenings. Mom and dad have collected and enjoyed owl art since they married in 1969, making the resident owl even more appreciated. When I was very young and we lived in Ohio, we once came back from vacation to find a baby owl perched on a curtain rod in the living room. Birds and bats would occasionally find their way down the chimney and into the house. We always did well to open the front door, turn off the lights in the house, turn on the porch light and encouraged our guests out with brooms (with a bit of squealing and giggling when our winged visitors came swooping towards us). Those evenings of bird and bat corralling are such great childhood memories. I’ve got so many rich and wonderful memories from my childhood that I could fill pages with them, but because I’m keeping each blog post to a paragraph, I’ll save them for later. Even though I’m sometimes impatient and angry, I am so grateful and proud of you for how I was raised. Mom and dad, thank you. 

Length of feather:  2 1/2”

SOLD

Day 16: Shoebox Butterfly

Butterflies are one of the best-selling subjects for my painted feathers. In fourth grade I found a monarch butterfly with a tattered wing and I kept it alive in a shoebox for a week. As though it happened earlier today, I feel like I have a crystal clear memory of standing in the front hall by the coat closet with the butterfly resting in my cupped hand. It relieved itself in that moment, in the late afternoon, with sun at an angle that made the wood floor and trim in the hall glow yellow and warm. I remember thinking how rare it is that one is even aware of the existence of butterfly poop, and I felt deeply sad that I couldn’t do more for the butterfly, hoping that it wasn’t terrified of me and that it’s broken wing wasn’t causing it terrible pain.

Length of Feather: 4 1/2”               

Day 8: Spork

There were no fast food chains in Archbold, Ohio, where I grew up, until a McDonalds moved in when I was in something like 8^th grade.  A few Saturdays each summer, our family would drive our big green Ford twenty minutes to the next town over, where they had a Kentucky Fried Chicken. We’d get a bucket of chicken with all the trimmings (I wanted the mashed potatoes. My brother was all about the biscuits) and head to the park to eat and play catch with our baseball mitts. These outings always felt exotic and special. There was something about the light in those particular trees that was especially vivid and colorful that sparkled differently than any of the other parks where we would picnic or play. 

This painting is on a chicken feather. Chicken on chicken.

Length of Feather: 2 5/8”