S. A. Walton Limited Edition Prints ~ Guiding Light ~ Barn Owl

GUIDING LIGHT

Barn Owl & Lutheran Church, Sugar Maple, Sassafras, Blue Beech, Pokeweed
Print Dimensions 12 x 24 inches
Original Medium: acrylic on watercolor paper

Price: (Framed) US $

The setting for this piece is a moonlit summer night in a valley in the Ozark Plateau through which runs Cedar Creek. The creek is a spring fed, crystal clear stream where we used to wade and swim, or fish for bluegill and smallmouth bass. If you wade upstream far enough from our place you will come to the quaint old Coldwater Lutheran Church, set back in the shady, quiet woods. If you wade downstream- northward- you will end up over your head in a larger, slower and relatively untraveled stretch of river which flows into Sam A. Baker State Park.

The inspiration for the original painting was moonlight filtering through a bunch of pokeberry leaves that I had found over a hundred miles away from this locale.

If you're an artist, sometimes you just never know what is going to motivate you to start on a painting, or even where that painting will ultimately take you. In a way, working on a painting it is like setting out to wade an unfamiliar creek where you may find a perfect swimming hole, or see a wary bird take flight, a softshell turtle glide by, or find a special resting place on a sunlit gravel bar ornamented with blue mist flowers and pearly mussel shells. You may find friends, you may find strangers, or perhaps you will find no one at all but yourself. And if you don't watch what you're doing, and just go with the flow, trouble could very well be waiting for you. But if you go the other way, you might find yourself fishing along with God.