Tornado by Sherry Barber

Living in tornado alley in central states, we are often under tornado warnings. My daughter and son-in-law are avid storm watchers and inspired me to create a piece on the subject. This piece began as a work in paste paper. A search revealed that tornados are the subject of many poets. I found a poem by the Kansas poet, Mary Williams Ward, to be particularly engaging as she describes what it was like to live through a tornado. I feel that the imagery of the horn of a unicorn takes the tornado from far off fantasy to a scary reality. I lettered the poem in gouache in the sickly yellow green that we often associate with tornado weather and enhanced the colors and depth of the storm with pastels.