‘Forsaken ~ Loggerhead Shrike & Skink’ copyright Susan A. Walton, S. A. Walton Studio, Hudson, Florida.

Description: Loggerhead Shrike (), five-lined skink () , and a venerable, very thorny honey locust tree () with wild grapevines () growing up the trunk.

When I was a child, and not yet old enough to wander the fields and woods alone, my experience with wildlife was limited to chance birds and butterflies passing through, and some rather creepy companions around the little shack and nearby creek, such as mud daubers, paper wasps, wolf spiders, daddy long legs, fence lizards, toads, tree frogs, wood frogs, crawdads, and garter snakes. One of the creatures that was almost always within my narrow little world were the elusive and glossy Five-Lined Skinks with their beautiful, bright blue tails.

These lizards were hard to ignore, being so elegantly dressed in fine scales that shimmered in the light. I spent a great deal of time trying to catch them, until I was quite skilled at finding their hiding places. I am sure they didn’t appreciate all the little Lego houses I built for them, either, for as bright and fanciful as these structures were, they were essentially cells, within which they were stuck as prisoners until something else distracted me.

When I was older and had to go to school all day, I began to see things more from their perspective, for as bright and fanciful as the school was with all the decorated bulletin boards, posters, and garish primary colors, it too was a kind of prison, a dull place to store children when their minds were longing to explore a larger and more intricate world. I couldn’t wait for the bell to ring at day’s end, so I understand full well why the skinks hightailed it out of my custom built castles when I opened the door.

As an adult now, I can sympathize with the countless skinks that had to endure my thoughtless meddling in their affairs. I wasted their time when they had important work to do, such as guarding their eggs, and catching and consuming lots of insects that otherwise would have pestered us. In an effort to make up for bothering them, I would catch them insects or offer them tiny bits of meat before setting them loose.

I very much appreciate what I learned from and about these very beneficial animals - and about myself, in those days.

I have a friend who shared his own childhood experiences with me when he took me to his family farm in Illinois after his father had passed away. It was a bittersweet day, cloudy, and a little chilly, and I could tell he was burdened by all the decisions he was going to be facing. We walked the place, the empty fields his father had farmed, and then the smaller patch of woods that his father was fortunately unable to plow. The soil was rich and deep, and there were no rocks to inhibit the plow. The land sloped down into the woods, and the gullies among the trees were deep, probably made so by the erosion from farming above.

There was larkspur, wood violet, and Dutchman’s Breeches in abundance, carpeting the ground and dancing in the breeze, untrampled by the passage of people or livestock. But there were also neighbors, and not all of the neighborly sort; they were the kind who take advantage of you when you are away. That, and the passing of his parents, was weighing on my friend’s mind, who like most farm raised men, suffer in silence.

We didn’t find any mushrooms that day as we had hoped, but did work our way up the copse of mighty oaks, the kind that have huge, sweet acorns with fringed caps nearly enclosing them, acorns much prized by squirrels and whitetail deer. Near them was this big honey locust tree, standing out on this bleak hill in the gray spring day in a way it never would in summer or fall, looking stark and drained of life, bearing its own wickedly sharp crown of thorns.

In fact, it was covered from just above the ground to the tips of its branches in these long six- to eight-inch thorns, maybe longer, and like the troubles of life, each thorn had its own thorns. I stopped and took some reference photos, because it was an impressively armed tree of the sort most people never get to see, in neighborhoods where people manicure their landscapes and strive to protect their children from nature, save the risk of having to live in close proximity to people who can often be more trouble than such trees. As I photographed the honey locust, trying to capture its stark form, all bristling with packed clusters of thorns, I was thinking- it being near Easter time- what it would be like to have cruel detractors force a crown of thorns on your head. And then I noticed in one of my shots that the tree had a grapevine scrambling up the side of it, despite the wicked-looking thorns. But both the locust tree and the vine strung up upon it looked very dead on that bleak, gray day.

So I set out initially to try and paint symbolically about sin and about cruelty, and the idea of the shrike came to me; a songbird with a taste for flesh and one known to impale unfortunate lizards and insects on thorns, to store the prey for later consumption. I chose as its victim one of my beloved, harmless, and beautiful skinks. I know it isn’t exactly the sort of painting people might purchase as a gift, but that’s OK. Not all art has to be marketable.

Sometimes art is just an artist’s -well, my way, of formulating prayer to my Maker when things are otherwise difficult to express, when I don’t know what to ask, and am looking for answers to human problems like pain, grief, betrayal, and despair, or on really great days when things are going well and inspiration is everywhere, art can be a thankful visual prayer for an artist simply and sincerely expressing thanks and joy.

A blank canvas can be very intimidating, but one way of overcoming that is to open the Bible to Psalms or just open it to anything, and try to illustrate the gist of what is there. So, when I was sketching out my composition for “Forsaken,” and referring back and forth to my references, I saw in one photograph three tiny locust leaves, a sign of hope amid despair. Spring is near : the sap will rise in the grapevine and the locust tree, they will come back to life and yes, in spite of harsh and unforgiving nature, there will be generations of skinks yet to come, for the Lord of Life also made those thorns to serve as refuge for many, and the vine’s grapes eventually will feed many. Spring has arrived and there will soon be blossoms adorning the tree leading to sweet pods, and birds and other creatures will shelter there in its branches.

#Shrike #Loggerhead #Locust #HoneyLocust