Diana

This piece is framed with outside dimensions of 13 x 15"; the art is 8 x 10." I designed the frame to be part of the art, like a beautiful border on a storybook illustration.

Diana is a mixed media creation in several layers of pastel pencil, watercolors, pen, hard pastel, and even touches of chalk, on heavy, pure cotton printmaking paper. Based on a snapshot I took of a red-tailed hawk at St. Paul's Raptor Center, she -- with her complex pattern of barred feathers -- required many hours' painstaking work.  She is float-mounted (raised slightly off the surface she rests on, with torn and deckled edges of the paper visible) in a custom frame under UV-resistant glass.

There are times when, while I am working on a particular piece, some bits of verse will form alongside the art. Diana was one such case.

Hawk

The dinosaurs that didn't die,

they climbed into the trees

and from the branches

on into the air

We built our little towns beneath

the shadows of their wings

We grew our little crops and

offered up our little prayers

Art and poetry ©2015 Tracie L. Thompson