“Inspiration, move me brightly
light the song with sense and color
Hold away despair
more than this I will not ask
Faced with mysteries dark and vast
statements just seem vain at last”
-Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead.
There is one specific bird that has long stirred my spirit to move paint across page after page. To call it my muse wouldn’t be completely unfair. Buteo jamaicensis. North America’s Red-tailed Hawk.
Since my youth Red-tailed Hawks have captured my imagination. One of my earliest memories regarding birds was my father pointing out a perched Red-tailed Hawk in the field by our house. Then later a school visit to a wildlife rehabilitation center where I met my first hawk. And years later while I explored California’s central coast seeing them float on thermals inspired me to take all I’d learned from my sister about painting and use it to try and catch their wonder.
“The storyteller makes no choice
soon you will not hear his voice
his job is to shed light
and not to master”
-Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead.
Red-tailed Hawks are found across almost all of North America. I’ve been across almost all of North America from one time or another and enjoyed these hawks on my travels. I put together this panel to demonstrate the incredible variety of colors they occur in.
Once again I’m proud to paint on a panel my father made for me. The same man who gave me my introduction to this great world of wildlife puts the pages right under my paintbrush.
farnco illustrations 