Oil on panel 6"X8"
Sometimes I do a little painting like this and manage to sell it before I post it. Thank you, Lord for everything.
Last spring on a warm morning my dog was barking insistently at something on the other side of the fence. I came closer and noticed a decent size water moccasin as still as a stone coiled with it's cottony white mouth agape with fangs showing. The snake stayed in that position as I managed to distract my dog and avert what was sure to be death of something, either the snake or the dog, or both.
As I was leaving my home in my pickup one day this summer I noticed that water moccasin in the road in front of me, offering itself as roadkill for my pleasure. Another car was coming up from behind me and I was sure that if I swerved to avoid killing it, the car behind me would certainly take that opportunity. I stopped in the middle of the street and got out of my car and gently urged the snake into the woods next to my house.
Perhaps a week ago, I witnessed an event in nature that is work remarking. I am aware that every winter for years a particular blue heron comes to spend time along the water's edge near my house. Some mornings I find him perched on one leg on a piling in my back yard. I saw him last week across the canal. He stood next to the bulkhead with what appeared to be a catfish in his beak. I looked closer and saw it was not a fish, but what I am sure was the snake I had twice spared in recent months. The heron banged his beak and the snake coiled around it several times against the bulkhead and over the next 5 minutes the bird swallowed the snake whole.
I witnessed the wonder of life and death in that moment, and I am grateful for it.
this painting is sold.
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