DID I DIE IN VAIN?

EnFuse E-zine

By: Francesca Owens
02/08/2006



“All the worlds a country”, is an expression I learned from my cousin
Luigi in southern Italy. I felt this this rang true for this series and I will
explain.

It was 11:00 at night when I sat at my desk creating “Release”, the final
work of this nine piece series. It had been a tough one to create, causing me
to emotionally grieve the plight of tigers as I labored through it. An
occasion glass of red wine at the closure of a piece softened the blow I often
felt in my heart.

This slaughtered tiger from Thailand is where the story begins. Since we would
be working together so intimately, I believed she deserved a name. I studied
her stripe patterns and found an area that distinguished her to me, as though
I could identify her from others tigers. The name TIGRA was chosen to honor my
first kitten out of college. Her uniquely woven pattern of stripes on the hind
section became my focus point to craft this series from.

The subject matter dictated composition. The median of execution ranged from
charcoal, image transfer, graphite, to hand printed reliefs. You will notice a
warm orange red value appearing near the same location of her body through out
the works, this is Tigra’s signature. Did you know that just like human
fingerprints, no two tigers have identical stripes? This basic premise flowed
through out the series.

The series begins with an unidentifiable subject titled “In Vain”. The
story that Judy Mills and Brian Gratwicke tell from www.savethetigerfund.org
www.savethetigerfund.org fills the body of this series. Images from the
field… tiger breeding farms in China, confiscated tiger parts in Thailand,
to the successful rescue of a Siberian tiger, named Victor with the help of
John Goodrich and his team in Russia.

When completed, I realized the world had played a hand in what has become
tigers fate of facing extinction in the wild, and the world would have to
solve this crisis. Henceforth “Did I Die In Vain?” was created. I hope it
moves you as it did me.

In our tigers fate, Francesca Owens

Please visit www.francescaowens.com to see more work.