Low Country Poster

Cows in the Florida dusk. The Florida wetlands are home to wetland cattle. Accustomed the swampy landscape of the Everglades and bred to be hardier than their northern cousins, this type of cattle roams the damp grasslands of the state, often through rough vegetation and trees. The closeness of the pine forests and swamp hammocks was never very conducive to roping and herding in the traditional sense, so the cowboys adapted their technique to include whips rather than ropes. The term "cr*cker" comes from this practice, derived from the sound of the whipcrack used to guide and herd the cattle through the scraggly landscape. This painting is from a photograph I took on the St Johns River in Florida, the headwaters of the Florida Everglades. The technique is vaguely impressionistic with an edge towards realism. I try to keep my work loose and free, but the urge to reproduce the image faithfully sometimes takes over. Call it OCD or being too detail-oriented. It's a constant internal battle.