This painting depicts a classic Lowcountry transition zone marsh edge, where the land meets the water of the ocean. Some species thrive in this biome, and others tolerate the occasional saltwater influence. Palmettos, live oaks, American cedars, and numerous flowering plant species, as well as birds, reptiles, and small vertebrates, are specific to this ecozone.

I painted this piece from a plein air painting I did previously. Note the golden hue of the live oak bloom tassels on the limbs with the Spanish moss as well as in the water and russet colored Spartina, indicating a Lowcountry spring.

I have spent a lifetime painting my beloved Lowcountry, the place of my birth and heritage. With each painting I try to evoke truth of place, a sense of “the time-of-day light,” the season, and the specific atmospheric conditions, all creating a poetry and the power to invite the viewer into a familiar place. I want to coax an audience into learning to observe and appreciate an environment, specifically that place that, as Sidney Lanier describes so well in a stanza of The Marshes of Glynn, starting at line 46:

So:

Affable live-oak, leaning low, —

Thus — with your favor — soft, with a reverent hand,

(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!)

Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand

On the firm-packed sand,

Free

By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.