Note: All photos by Jann Ledbetter, unless otherwise noted.
Joe a noble Saker Falcon, is the inspiration for a series of paintings by artist Claudia Pettis, whose work will be celebrated at Museo August 3. The exhibition runs August 1 through September 1.
Saker Falcons are among the world’s fastest birds, achieving speeds of 93 mph in level flight, and when diving, can reach speeds of 190 mph. They hunt rodents and small birds. Saker Falcons are the national bird of the United Arab Emirates, and the sport—often associated with wealth and royalty—is more than 9,000 years old.
Locally, falconer Steve Layman—also a raptor educator and rehabber—owns and trains Joe. When asked if Joe could be photographed as a model for Claudia’s paintings, Steve agreed, and Claudia found her next muse.
We may know Claudia’s art mostly from her prolific works depicting sheep, whose wooly coats, spirit and personalities inspired her for years. Her art has graced galleries the past decades, and has been commissioned by private collectors as well.
It was during the COVID pandemic while reading Helen MacDonald’s memoir, H is for Hawk, that Claudia found a new subject to dive into and explore. H is for Hawk finds the author in deep grief over the sudden death of her father. It was by training a fierce Goshawk that MacDonald found the inspiration to feel alive again.
“They’re a very difficult hawk to train,” Claudia said of Goshawks. “The hood became part of the training. While we were in COVID, when I put on my mask, I really thought about what a falcon goes through. I really felt safer.”
Steve agreed, saying the falcon’s hood “…is a humane way to transport the bird from one place to the next. With this guy (Joe), I offer a hood and he knows it’s a nice safe place.”
He recalled establishing a raptor rehabilitation program with Jim Foster, a Woodland Park Zoo veterinarian, where hoods were used to calm injured birds and prevent them from hurting themselves further with panicked movements.
“We were the first to use hoods in rehab,” Steve said. “The birds feel nice and closed in.”
All of Claudia’s paintings depict Joe wearing his leather hood.
The images she paints and emotions they evoke are born from Claudia’s immersion into her subject.
To deepen her connection with raptors and her painting, Steve recommended Claudia read Understanding Birds of Prey, by Nick Fox.
To convey the inspiration of Joe the Saker Falcon, Claudia read a passage from the book to Nancy Whittaker, co-owner of the Museo Gallery in Langley. Nancy stopped by the artist’s studio to meet Joe, and get a sense of which paintings would be part of Claudia’s upcoming exhibit.
“Is this why we admire the falcon so much?” Claudia read. “She may be frightened of you, she may be angry at you, she may be pleased to see you. She will never lie to you, although you may not understand her. She has no self pity and, even on the point of death from some consuming disease, her spirit is unbroken. It is a privilege to be in the presence of such a spirit, to draw strength from it and to learn from it. The gaze of a dying falcon is the distillation of life and a denial of triviality.”
Steve mentioned this admiration and how it showed up in Claudia’s paintings.
“Not to give idle compliments, in our conversation I could see your interpretation of what you feel show up in the painting,” he said. It’s not artificial.”
Claudia described the delicious experience of focus—where time is gone and she’s in the the flow—experienced while painting Joe’s various moods.
“I do what is moving me at the time I’m experiencing it,” Claudia said. “I kept looking at the hood, touching his feathers. Feathers are way different than wool. That’s what’s taken me so long, is to get the feel of the bird, not just what it looks like. The feel of the bird is magnificent, it has a mystery heritage.”
Joe’s Saker Falcon heritage found Claudia researching falcon history from England and North Africa, Japan and the Arabic countries where kings, knights, sheiks and shoguns competed in the sport.
“When you experience a Saker Falcon, you can’t help but go to those places,” Claudia said. “Painting falcons came as a surprise. It’s all coming from that initial immersion in my subject that I couldn’t possibly paint a falcon as I did a sheep. It’s a whole different world.”
It’s easy to fall in love with Joe. There’s something about being with him that quiets the mind and inspires awe. Frankly, it was impossible to take my eyes from him. While sitting at the table during this interview, I noticed Joe, standing on the floor, his hood intact, his head bowed, leaning his left shoulder against Steve’s chair, totally present and waiting amid the human conversation.
Steve Layman found his avocation with raptors as a middle schooler living in Yakima. A cover of a 1930’s National Geographic magazine depicting the life of an Indian prince and his skills with falconry set Steve on his course. As a hunter, he observed how raptors followed when dogs flushed rabbits out of the bushes. So connected was Steve to raptors that he began raising hawks as pets and hunting with them.
“Growing up I had pet Magpies and Ravens, and I wanted a hawk to replicate the image I had from National Geographic,” Steve recalled. “We ran around the Yakima River from dawn till dark in the 50s-early 60s. No one put a leash on you. We’d find Red tail hawk and Kestrel nests. We’d climb trees and big cottonwoods and get young ones. My mom was great, letting me raise the birds, an Iowa farm girl. I got from books from Europe that taught me how to figure out how to feed them and train them to come back.”
While falconry is typically practiced by royalty and the wealthy in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, North American falconry is most often based on natural history, Steve explained.
“Almost all the falconers I know have an interest in biology,” he said.
Steve was a biologist working in the Yakima area as an adult. When the economy turned sour during the 80s Steve started a new line of work which gave him freedom to continue working with birds of prey, and earn a better living than that of a biologist.
“I figured out a service business—washing windows—which gave me time to pursue my interest and still be involved in research,” Steve said. “It was the best darn business.”
Washing windows took him to the Seattle area where he attracted hundreds of customers. One client asked him to clean windows on Whidbey back in the late 80s. Steve liked the island and thought it would be a great place to raise his family and hunt with his birds. He noticed Whidbey had a lot of rabbits. The Layman family moved to Whidbey in 1989. Steve has since remained immersed in falconry, researching, teaching and rehabbing raptors.
Meanwhile, Claudia recalled a book she read, The Peregrine, by J.A. Baker. “This sentence that Baker wrote so moved me, it left me breathless,” she wrote in an email.
Here is the sentence: “I will follow him till my predatory human shape no longer darkens in terror the shaken kaleidoscope of color that stains the deep fovea of his brilliant eye. My pagan head shall sink into the winter land, and there be purified.”
Claudia is adding the finishing touches to her paintings for next week’s opening of the Museo exhibition August 1 to September 1.
Stop by and say hello at her artist’s reception August 3.