Above is the link to a free giveaway, which is an 11 x 8" watercolor print of a shorebird in a cattail marsh. The title of the print and original work is 'Adult Avocet in the Secrecy of Rain'.
The original 12 x 9" painting that this print is made from was created in 2001, mainly in the suburban area north of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area and in Lac Qui Parle County over in Minnesota's southwestern corner. When I started the work I was remembering my first-ever avocet, a wading bird with an upward-curving bill, which I had seen along a creek bank in North Dakota in late May when my child was about seven years old and hiking the prairie with me. In coloration and markings the avocet was a book picture come to life, instantly knowable by name. In its behavior, as it chased geese and ducks off a sand bar, the avocet--or blue shanks if you enjoy using old-folks' names based on a bird's quirky looks and mannerisms--seemed militant and self-important, like a thin eccentric clearing much bulkier strangers from a public space, everybody dressed in their seasonal finery.
In the painting however I was invested in a predominant theme of my own and much other natural-history art, the sense of 'Ohh' that comes to a person who is crossing land or water and sees something that is alive and true to that place, especially if it is seldom seen or never-before-met but has a wondrous mystique to it. Yes, the soul notes, this is a piece of Creation that I have missed out on before today, but can now verify through my own senses which are not to be mistaken. And if I could transform, only for a minute, into an avocet...
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