Art Conjures up Real Creature

18 Aug 2011 2 Comments

by Sandra Seekins in My Life

     I decided to try making a linocut recently.  I started with a simple idea.  An owl. Using the tools with the required delicacy was a challenge, but I wasn’t unhappy with my first attempt. I’ve included a photo of the print here. More significant than the represented owl, however, was an actual barred owl I spotted the next day on a branch twenty yards from the back gate of my complex.  It was the middle of the afternoon and the magnificent creature was a marvelous sight.  How do owls manage to look so nonplussed, so majestic?  While I didn’t get a picture of the owl, I did take a picture of one of its feathers found on the ground nearby.

It seems that my representational homage to the owl conjured up an owl in reality.  I felt really fortunate.  I even went and got one of my neighbour’s kids to come look at it, and then two of the tradesmen who are replacing our gutters.  One of them asked: “how can that be a bird, it doesn’t look like other birds?”  I thought it was quite amusing when his coworker looked at him as if he was an idiot and said: “there are millions of species of birds…think of a penguin, think of an ostrich!”

The next linocut subject must be chosen carefully if this is the effect I am to expect.  Maybe a bear or a deer, but certainly not a cougar.

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