A Kettle of Hawks Takes Flight: $825 Raised for PBS KVIE Art Auction

When A Kettle of Hawks took flight for this year’s PBS KVIE Art Auction, I felt both gratitude and lift. The painting sold for $825, with the proceeds supporting the station — a full-circle moment for me, both as an artist and a public media ambassador and advocate for over two decades.

This piece began not just as a painting, but as a meditation on language and motion. The phrase “a kettle of hawks” refers to the group name of a circling flight of hawks riding a thermal current. I loved the image — a collective noun that embodies both gathering and ascent. That became the spark for my first podcast episode of A Gather of Gatherings, where art, story, and sound converge.

A Kettle of Hawks acrylic painting by Kellie Raines

Visually, the painting plays with theatrical lighting, transformation, and tension — a still life that refuses to stay still. Deep blues and teals meet wings. It’s part of an ongoing body of work that translates collective nouns into imagery — each one exploring how language shapes the way we perceive nature, and how art can bring those words to life.

Seeing A Kettle of Hawks find a new home through the PBS KVIE Art Auction felt like the artwork completing its own circle of motion. The sale doesn’t just mark a personal milestone; it supports the storytelling, education, and creativity that PBS KVIE brings to our community every day.

It’s always a little surreal (and fun) to watch your own work being presented and discussed by others — to see something that began in solitude suddenly out in the world, living its own life through new voices and perspectives. Sitting in the control room, surrounded by monitors and the hum of television production, I felt that strange blend of distance and connection that only art can create.

I’m deeply thankful to everyone who watched, bid, and continues to value local art and artists AND public media. It’s humbling to know that something I made — inspired by a word, a motion, a moment — now contributes to the station that has long supported creativity in others.

Inside the control room, while my painting, “A Kettle of Hawks,” was featured on air during the PBS KVIE Art Auction.

For the whole origin story and the poetic side of this piece, visit the Gather of Gatherings Blog — where language and image first intertwined.

And if you’d like a more personal reflection — on gratitude, giving back, and what it means when art takes on a life of its own — you can read that version on my Muse + Echo Substack.

Every creation has its own lift. This one just happened to rise on the airwaves of public media. I’m proud of my Kettle of Hawks painting for PBS KVIE’s mission.