Painting of the Month - October 2022

"Fire Hawk"
by Susan Wallis
12 x 12 in

For thousands of years, Australia’s Aboriginal people have sung stories about sacred “firehawks” — raptors that, according to lore, use fire to hunt. There are stories where raptors are reported to have snatched brands from Indigenous cooking fires and deposited them in grass up to half a kilometer away. The hawks do this to flush their prey out from the bush.

In this painting I tried to capture the moment of the hunt where the hawk is about to start a fire. This piece is on display till October 23rd at Melt Studio Gallery in the exhibit “Three Sisters, Three Artists, One Fire”.

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