“I Shall Walk In My Integrity ~ Whitetail Buck and False Blue Indigo (Baptisia australis)”

Inspired by Psalm 26 in the Bible, this work features one of America’s favorite wild game animals, a white tailed deer. The buck’s growing antlers are still wearing the velvet of early summer, his neck has not yet swollen in the excitement of the rut that is still months away. For the time being, it is a season of plenty and peace in a meadow lit by the golden light of early morning. He has been striding among the tall grasses and weeds in purpose and confidence, and has taken a momentary pause while passing a large clump of False Blue Indigo (Baptisia australis,) a startlingly beautiful and well-formed perennial wildflower of North American prairies and meadows.

Look closely : there are always bees amid the flowers, though the deer pays them no attention. And who knows what predator could spring from the tall weeds? Yet this deer has not submitted to fear, nor stayed hidden in the neighboring forest. Warmth and light awaits beyond the shadowy trees, and for the summer at least, he has been blessed with forage enough to strengthen him for trials and temptations to come.

By the time the rut arrives, the flowers will be gone, leaves dried and fallen, and the big inflated seed pods of false indigo will be dry and rattling in every breeze. The white tailed deer will have lost the rusty coat of summer and will have taken on a grayer coat to better conceal them in the nearly bare-branched woods of winter. Then, the bucks will begin to do some rattling themselves, challenging one another for females. And hunters will be about rattling old shed antlers to lure in any deer that haven’t the sense to tell the difference and rush toward what they think is the sound of a rival.

This is the time for extra caution and wisdom, but because it is also a time of great deception, and many a foolish deer will not see the shoots of false indigo emerging in spring.

This painting, framed in a dark finished, wood Larson Juhl frame with an acorn motif, is painted on a hand-primed, uncradled but sturdy hardboard that the artist repurposed from a shipping crate used in moving, so it is quite heavy.

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