is an artist and illustrator with a penchant for storytelling. A traveler at heart, she has attended eight international artist-in-residence programs that provide the opportunity for extended visits and cultural immersion. Her first book, The Traveling Artist: A Visual Journal, was released in 2021. Missy earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Humanities and Arts from Carnegie Mellon University in 2010. She has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, a Folger Institute Fellowship, the ArtPrize Educator Award, a New Student Scholarship to the Academy of Realist Art Boston, and traveled to Vietnam as a Four Seasons Envoy. She is a represented artist at the Portland Art Gallery in her home state of Maine.
According to Renaissance folklore, robins were kind and adored humans so deeply that if one came upon a person who had passed away, it would place flowers on the body.
Shakespeare mainly employs the lark as a beloved symbol for the morning, the herald of the dawn. Most of the lark’s 27 appearances in Shakespeare’s works feature it welcoming the start of each day with a sweet song.
In his plays Shakespeare deploys the cormorant as a symbol of insatiable hunger and gluttony, drawing also on the bird's reputation as a portent of doom and evil.
With the golden eagle, we continue following artist Missy Dunaway on a bird-watching expedition through Shakespeare’s works. The eagle soars throughout Shakespeare's world, Renaissance literature, and beyond - symbolizing strength, power, and the divine.
Thanks to its peculiar reproductive cycle, distant migration, and haunting melodies, the cuckoo may hold the title for most folklore among Shakespeare’s birds.
The barnacle goose, referenced in Shakespeare's "The Tempest," was an unmistakable symbol of metamorphosis for a 17th-century audience. It was commonly believed that the barnacle goose evolved from driftwood. Artist Missy Dunaway shares her painting of this fascinating bird along with an exploration of its literary associations.
