When Franna Lusson embarks on one of her wildlife portraits, she doesn’t bother with practice sketches. She dives right in on the final sheet of paper—drawing and redrawing in bold, expressive lines until she’s satisfied. “I work very instinctively and intuitively,” explains the Bay Area-based artist. “That’s why I erase so much, because I just have to work it until I get it right—until I can live with it.” Her mixed-media pieces aim to capture not only physical characteristics, but also what she calls the “elemental aspect” of an animal, or the feeling it evokes.
Although Lusson had never even seen a photo of a Wood Stork before she began researching them for The Aviary, she was instantly taken by the bird’s distinctive presence. The large wader—the only stork native to North America—has mostly white plumage and a bare, scaly head and neck. “I wouldn’t call Wood Storks pretty birds, but I just loved them,” she says. “It’s not like an everyday bird that you’d see in the neighborhood.”
Jessica S. McKenzie 