"Barn Owl" by Betsy Bowen

Betsy Bowen is one of my favorite printmakers, and I've featured her before on this blog. This image was used with her permission. If you fall in love with it, she sells the originals and reproductions at her website, here, along with many other stunning prints.

Bowen has illustrated several books including one written by Laura Erickson and titled Twelve Owls (I found out about that book after I named my own 12 Owls project.)

I feel this is a more fathomable Barn Owl than the one I posted about earlier this week. This creature leans down either to inspect or search. Though it is beautiful and clandestine, it is also an animal with basic needs and instinctual behaviors.

"Outside Stood An Old Fellow Chopping Wood" by Betsy Bowen

Image posted with the permission of the artist. This print was published in the book The Troll With no Heart in His Body by Lise Lunge-Larsen, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 1997. See more of Betsy Bowen's artwork on her website here.

A great troll, camouflaged as a towering evergreen, wrenches over, hands curled, eyes set with focused urgency. Is he looking at something in that hand? The sound of steady chops breaks the quiet stillness.The rest of the forest is set in aqua-blue like a whisper in the background of this dramatic scene. Indeed, the troll, flanked by pillars and with an arch overhead, seems to stand on a stage. And though I momentarily feel I am a member of an audience, his anxious leaning over and the shape of the rectangle which encases him cause me, too, to lean over. It is as if I am peering into a shoe box I had stowed under the bed and forgot about a long, long time ago.  

"Great Horned Owl" by Betsy Bowen

Image posted with the permission of the artist. More of Betsy Bowen's woodcuts can be found at her website.

How vivid are the colors reflected in the moonlight! Out of this not-so-darkness, he gives a dominating glare. His yellow-disk eyes push me down with force. He seems perched rather high up, larger than life, giving a look that declares this forest his kingdom. I am merely an unwelcome trespasser, and while I probably should grovel for mercy, I'm too mesmerized by his vibrant regalia.