Guests for Dinner, 18x24 Oil on Canvas

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This Wood Stork is calmly looking over the Spoonbills feeding in Mrazek Pond in the Everglades. The Wood Stork puts his bill underwater and waits for his prey, then his beak snaps shut at lightning speed, 25 milliseconds. This is known as grope-feeding. The Wood Stork has one of the fastest reflexes of any vertebrate.

This was just sold by the Brevard Cultural Alliance (BCA) at the Melbourne Airport. We artists are so lucky to have the BCA and Lynne Brezina.

Carmen

Pardon My Back, 24x18 Oil on Canvas

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This is the first in a series and it's a bigger painting than I usually post. I didn't pose these birds, they were standing exactly like this, so this was one of those paintings that got named before I started it.

While in the Everglades I got to see plenty of mangroves, mangrove forests and mangrove islands. What fascinating trees they are. They thrive in salty environments because they are able to obtain fresh water from saltwater. Some secrete excess salt through their leaves, and others block absorption of  salt at their roots. Their intricate root design makes a protective nursery for tiny marine life.

Everglades Sketch Journal

This is just fun. Ever since Diana Gessler's class, I have enjoyed journaling my experience in a sketchbook. If you go to the Everglades, be sure to stop at the Robert is Here fruit stand. Robert started as a six-year-old child in 1959, selling cucumbers on the corner. He was so small people couldn't see him and would drive by, so his father put up a sign that said, "Robert is Here." Now Robert is raking in, as this place has a booming business, with every fruit and vegetable you can think of.

Below, this is exactly how we looked sleeping inside the little tent. It was cold at night, and we were like mummies. Our picnic table was decorated with a lamp, which Cindy brought in case we had electricity at the site. We didn't.

Mangroves, 6x8

Here are mangroves, reaching down to the water to establish a foothold and do their good work in the Indian River. I love them; their weirdness, their beauty, their usefulness.

PURCHASE

Spoonbill, 5x7

This is my favorite bird. It is beautiful, yet has a funny face that is a big spoon. There are a lot of contradictions like that in the bird world--like the albatross, so lovely, so graceful in the air, then it crash-lands and waddles away. 

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