The White Eagle-We Can't Do This Alone

So this June I had  the amazing opportunity to go to Juneau Alaska and teach my PAINT BIG class and vist my looong time friend Debi....My  total awe started when the plane decended into Juneau  and flew over the Mendenhall Glacier...a breathtaking unbelievably emormous white river of ice...and the wonder continued day by day ...the endless mountains and skies, the verdant  rain forests, whales and the EAGLES..everywhere..

I 've been pondering the bald eagles since I've been back home because they were so spectacular..and yet so ordinary in the Alaskan landscape.  Then I got to thinking about how the eagle is our national mascot...and next..(it crept in.)..how our current political climate  seems so far from what the eagle represents -integrity, unity, and freedom -which are challenged daily by a bunch of old un-informed white guys in Washington DC 

Next, my mind thought back to those amazing Southeastern Alaska vistas where th eagles stood together, like a flock, and how they were probably scoping out the next meal.  I realized that in order to deal with the current crazy politics people should find themelves in a flock too,  and so should I...Like the eagles, magestic  loners, we are all better off in a group.

Hence my third inspiration for the White Eagle painting above...I researched writings about being alone verses being in a group and I was lucky enough to come upon the poem by Maya Angelou called ALONE which sums up what I was trying to get to when I made  White Eagle..that no matter how regal you think you are, nobody is better off alone.

If you break up the word ALONE you get AL-ONE, that's where we really are.

Alone

by Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.