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Davenport's Log will live in eternity

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By Barb Ickes | Thursday, April 03, 2008 | 8 comment(s)

It was a lone bright spot in a cold, seemingly lifeless expanse.

The Log brought salvation — protection from the frozen gray of the Mississippi River that threatened to invade already-sunken spirits.

And now I get to take The Log home.

Allen Holloway is a Bettendorf artist who said he’s been “looking for an excuse” to paint The Log that’s snagged in the shallow water beneath Lindsay Park in Davenport. When he was commissioned by Marc Wilson of Hampton, Ill., to paint the white pelicans that recently added us to their migratory route, his excuse came home to roost.

Holloway and his wife, Kathy, presented me last week with the first print of the painting he’s dubbed “Pelicans’ Pilgrimage along the Mississippi River.” It’s beautiful. The original, some four times the size of my print and glowing in acrylic, must be spectacular.

Holloway said that I inspired him to paint The Log, which makes me his muse. I always wanted to be somebody’s muse.

I first wrote about The Log and its rotating inhabitants almost exactly three years ago. I’m surely one of hundreds of Quad-Citians who make a point of catching a glimpse of The Log as we pass the curving little section of River Drive that offers its best view.

Actually, Holloway got a better view before picking up his brush.

“It must have been just a degree or two — maybe zero — the day a friend with a boat took me out to get pictures,” he said.

He used the close-ups, along with children’s books on pelicans he found at the Bettendorf Library, and spent a month — when he wasn’t working on the line at Oscar Mayer — painting The Log and the pelicans.

His piece captures the special allure of The Log and how it seems to tempt every species of bird that flies along. It must look to them like an ideal park bench where they can rest their tired wings.

And Holloway isn’t done yet.

The pelican piece is the first in a four-part series of paintings that will feature The Log in each season on the Mississippi River. Summertime will bring mallard ducklings. Autumn will add Canada geese to the waters, and winter will bring bald eagles to the scene.

Holloway has a gift for painting animals. In fact, he mostly works in pet portraiture, and I can see why from his Web site (artbyallenholloway.com). Making a dog actually look like a dog seems challenging enough from where I’m sitting. Capturing the animals’ personality borders on miracle.

But there they are — dozens of beloved pets with expressions peering out of canvas like they’re looking through a window in the front door.

“I get a lot of tears from my dog paintings, especially if the pet has passed,” he said.

He even got a tear or two from The Log.

“It was like we were looking through the same eyes,” he said of my love for The Log. “The day’s not right if I don’t get to see what’s on it.”

I’ll bet there are more than two of us who can relate.

Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.