Spring Thaw – Red-tailed Hawk
Robert Bateman Hand Signed Artist Proof 18″ x 32.5″
Edition Size: 76
“Although forests are a great treasure, I have always found meadows a joy. They are open and comfortable and accessible. Lacking the mysteries of deep woods, they tend to lay everything before your eyes as in the pages of a book. Looks, however, are deceiving. A natural meadow is a very complex infrastructure of plants and animals. Nature is not only more complicated than we know, it is more complicated than we can know.
For over two decades I walked this bit of meadow on various paths in every season and every weather. It was never the same as the day before or the year before at the same date. This is because nature is endlessly dynamic.
One of my favourite periods is spring melt time. There is the promise of new life and warm weather. Also, the melting snow makes exciting, abstract patterns. It reveals the little field vole runways which were the entire world of these mice during the winter. The red-tailed hawk is hoping to find one of these little creatures hustling amidst its old haunts.” Robert Bateman
(From the original painting Spring Thaw – Red-tailed Hawk – 1993 – 20″ x 36″ Acrylic on Board)
