Manti woman ensures a painting of each fallen soldier goes to kin

MANTI — A small, wild fledgling sits in a Christmas box on the floor of Kaziah Hancock's farmhouse, waiting to be fed its afternoon meal of raw hamburger.

The young bird fell from its nest on Hancock's 15-acre ranch two weeks ago, and since then, she has been its mother. Pausing during her painting, Hancock takes a tub of meat from her fridge and feeds the bird one small lump at a time with a pair of tweezers.

"I mother everything and everyone," Hancock says, her voice high and thin like the bird's real mother. "This is just who I am."

In the corner of the room rests Hancock's 604th portrait of a dead American soldier. The young man is smiling, his shirt loosely unbuttoned.

"That burned sepia off to the left side of his head, it's so warm," Hancock says. "I used muted shades of beautiful color to keep this soothing."

When Hancock talks about the colors on her canvas, she does so with the same passion and gusto as a mother describing her eclectic children — using words like sensitive, warm, exciting and quiet to give life to their effect on people.

These are Hancock's children: her colors, her sick bird, her herd of 70 goats roaming outside and her small puppy, Whiskey, tied to her shed.

She spends her day painting the portraits of other children who died while fighting in the Middle East.

Six years ago, Hancock founded a nonprofit, Project Compassion, that gives gallery-quality portraits to the families of fallen soldiers. Somehow, the paintings they receive seem more alive than the photos on which they are based.

With the help of other artists, 1,600 portraits have been completed since Project Compassion began in 2003, and thousands more remain on their order sheets.

The supplies for each 18-by-24-inch portrait cost $250. A private benefactor in California reimburses Project Compassion for the materials, but there is no money to compensate the artists for their time and effort, or the organization's overhead.

To raise funds, Hancock placed 34 of her personal paintings for sale on her Web site. The funds raised will generate the money Hancock says her organization desperately needs.

Kneeling down to feed her bird, Hancock doesn't look like a 70-year-old woman. She springs to fetch the bird when it clears the walls of the box, and she springs again when a newborn kitten gnaws at the cord of a heat lamp.

But all of this is on the outside. "This old sister is in pain," she says.

Last year, Hancock was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.

Though its toll cannot easily be seen on her body, her refrigerator is a stash of steroids and green dandelion shakes that lubricate her joints and allay the crippling symptoms.