‘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 which, when young, sport 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 Lego castles as soon as the opportunity arose.

Older now, I can sympathize with the many 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, but that’s really no compensation.

I very much appreciate what I learned from and about these very beneficial animals then - and about myself.

I have a friend who shared his own childhood experiences with me when he drove 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 down a steep slope 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 them the neighborly sort; there were one or two who were the kind that take advantage of you when you are away, and make you wonder if you should just sell and move on.

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 morel mushrooms that day as we had hoped, but we did work our way up the copse of mighty and long-lived Burr Oaks (Quercus macrocarpa) a species in the white oak group (oaks that produce acorns annually, unlike red oaks) that have huge, sweet acorns with thick, long-fringed caps nearly enclosing half the nut. They are the largest acorn produced by any North American tree, and long ago these trees dominated what was once a landscape of savannas, long since converted to farmland, which native people maintained with fire to attract big game like bison and elk for hunting. Burr oak acorns are much prized by squirrels, turkey, whitetail deer, and any animal that can get its paws on them.

Near the oaks 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 ten or twelve feet in long, six-to eight-inch thorns (maybe some even longer) and like the troubles of life, each thorn had its own thorns to bear. I stopped and took some reference photos, because it was an impressively armed tree of the sort most people never get to see, in their safe neighborhoods where people manicure their landscapes and strive to protect their children from nature.

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 to wear a crown made of thorns like these? That’s my wandering artist’s mind going off on a tangent. What thorny species would have been used in that time and place to crown the King of Kings- some kind of acacia, perhaps? For it is certain there were no American honey locusts in the Middle East.

Note to self: look that one up, in case someone ever wants an illustration made of that place and time.

And then I noticed, in one of my shots, that the tree had a grapevine scrambling up the side of it, over, under and through the wicked-looking thorns. Coincidentally, or not coincidentally, a Grapevine also plays a major role in the Easter story.

But both the locust tree and the vine upon it looked very dead on that bleak, gray day when I joined Dave on his walk on his father’s farm.

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 them for later consumption. This behavior gave it another common name: butcher bird. So 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. Often it is a meditative way to just get a mood out of one’s system.

Sometimes art is just my way of formulating a 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. On other days, when things are going well and inspiration is everywhere, art can be a joyful, visual prayer simply and sincerely expressing thanks to a much greater artist. I wanted this piece to convey an initial sense of despair, but was looking for a way to eventually direct the eye to hope.

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 the grief of my friend’s loss. So I included them discretely in the painting, and thus completed the composition of the artwork.

Spring is near : the sap will rise in the grapevine and the locust tree; their buds will swell and they will come back to life. In spite of harsh and unforgiving nature, there will be generations of skinks - and people - yet to come, for the Lord of Life also turns thorns to good, 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 later to honey-sweet pods, and birds and other creatures attracted to and blessed with the bounty will shelter there in its branches.

#Artforsale #Acrylic #WildlifeArt #AnimalArt

#Shrike #Loggerhead #Locust #HoneyLocust