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Missy Dunaway

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.
Birds of Shakespeare: The common starling
Shakespeare and Beyond

Birds of Shakespeare: The common starling

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Missy Dunaway
Birds of Shakespeare: The wild turkey
a male and female turkey with autumn leaves, acorns, turkey eggs, and turkey feathers
Shakespeare and Beyond

Birds of Shakespeare: The wild turkey

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Missy Dunaway
Birds of Shakespeare: The great cormorant
great cormorant
Shakespeare and Beyond

Birds of Shakespeare: The great cormorant

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Missy Dunaway

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.

Birds of Shakespeare: The ring-necked pheasant
Shakespeare and Beyond

Birds of Shakespeare: The ring-necked pheasant

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Missy Dunaway

Artist Missy Dunaway explores references to the pheasant in “The Winter’s Tale” on her bird-watching expedition through Shakespeare’s works.

Birds of Shakespeare: The kingfisher
kingfisher painting
Shakespeare and Beyond

Birds of Shakespeare: The kingfisher

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Missy Dunaway

Artist Missy Dunaway explores references to the kingfisher in two Shakespeare plays, King Lear and 1 Henry VI.

Birds of Shakespeare: The golden eagle
eagle objects
Shakespeare and Beyond

Birds of Shakespeare: The golden eagle

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Missy Dunaway

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.

Birds of Shakespeare: The Eurasian blackbird
blackbird painting
Shakespeare and Beyond

Birds of Shakespeare: The Eurasian blackbird

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Missy Dunaway

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom sings a tune about blackbirds to keep up his courage when he finds himself in strange circumstances.

Birds of Shakespeare: The cuckoo
cuckoo
Shakespeare and Beyond

Birds of Shakespeare: The cuckoo

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Missy Dunaway

Thanks to its peculiar reproductive cycle, distant migration, and haunting melodies, the cuckoo may hold the title for most folklore among Shakespeare’s birds.

Birds of Shakespeare: The barnacle goose
Barnacle Goose
Shakespeare and Beyond

Birds of Shakespeare: The barnacle goose

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Missy Dunaway

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…

Visualizing Shakespeare’s Birds
Collation

Visualizing Shakespeare’s Birds

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Missy Dunaway

a guest post by Missy Dunaway Greetings! I was the Folger Shakespeare Library’s artist-in-residence in November of 2021. I dedicated my Folger Institute Fellowship to a painting project entitled Birds of the Bard. This growing collection of paintings will catalog…

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