Putting the Quiet Dignity of the Wood Stork to Paper

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.”

Lusson was drawn to reference photos that convey the bird’s impressive breadth—the stork with wings outstretched in flight, or proudly standing tall. “I love the stance,” she says. “It’s almost a dignified stance.” To portray the bird, Lusson started by laying out the basic figure in charcoal, erasing and redrawing as needed. Once Lusson established the general outline, she smudged the charcoal to create shadows and added color and life with earth-toned oil pastels and colored pencils. Then she blended the colors into the paper with linseed oil, lending depth and subtlety to the final piece. Sometimes she’ll use a paintbrush, but just as often she goes in with her fingers or nails.

Most of her pieces take a few hours of work, spread out over a day or two. The finished pieces maintain an element of mess: “There’s a lot of random marks on the paper that I can’t erase,” she says. “Or when I’m using the linseed oil, drops will fall on the paper and stain it. They aren’t clean, antiseptic pieces.” The approach gives her Wood Stork portrait an immediacy, like a photographer capturing the ephemeral moment just before a bird takes flight, when it’s ever-so-slightly out of focus.

Lusson loved art as a child, but she didn’t pursue it seriously until her early thirties, when she started studying fashion illustration at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Her art practice has offered a therapeutic outlet for Lusson, who has a serious mental health diagnosis. Since 2010, she’s been part of Creative Growth, an organization in Oakland that advances artists with developmental disabilities. Founded in 1974, the institution provides artists with studio space, materials, and access to teachers and classes, and exhibits their work in its own gallery space as well as promoting their pieces throughout the United States and internationally. For Lusson, the space has served as an artistic home—and a literal lifeline.

Although Lusson has experience with portraiture, figurative drawing, and collage, she mostly draws animals and birds (her favorite is the American Crow). She’s often distressed by society’s lack of care and consideration for other species—for example, the federally threatened Wood Stork, whose populations plummeted in response to the degradation of its habitats in the Florida Everglades and other southeastern swamps. “We need to acknowledge them more,” she says. “Because once they’re gone, we can’t bring them back.” Lusson hopes to inspire more care for these wild creatures through her work, portraying them with dignity, agency, and a presence uniquely their own.