“Judgement Seat ~ Barred Owl,” an original acrylic painting, copyright artist Susan Walton, of S. A. Walton Studio, Hudson, Florida.

My art studio sits in the encircling arms of a slough full of cypress, sweet gum, magnolia, and holly, on the Gulf side or “Nature Coast“ of Florida. This means that it is my pleasure to hear a pair of highly vocal barred owls nearly every evening. These curious hunters aren’t too difficult to call in closer, even by my admittedly awful imitation of their “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you aaaaaaaaaaall” call. The barred owl is a bird with a Southern drawl, and it hunts a surprising variety of foods, not just the expected small rodents, but frogs, snakes, crayfish, and bats, too.

One evening, while waiting for the usual spectacle of wild turkeys flying up to roost in our long leaf pines for the night, and while watching bats making frantic circuits in the sunset sky overhead in pursuit of unseen flying insects, a neighbor put his calling skills to work for us by holding a raucous conversation with an owl that was far up the slough. It wasn’t long before the owl began to move toward us, pausing now and then to chat.

Within a few minutes, it landed roughly on a pine next to a power pole and looked us up and down. Clearly disappointed that there were no owls in our company, it took off again, but not before I had a chance to snap some blurry photos of it.

Later that night I did a quick sketch from memory, and instead of the power pole, I sketched it as it would look if it were perched on a vine or winding limb in the fork of interesting tree that I had seen in the swamp.

It is commonly held that owls represent wisdom, a tradition that comes from ancient Greek pagan culture, as I recall. That is not what I was thinking about here. But in the Bible, they represent the Almighty’s just and divine judgement against people who have turned away from their Creator towards idolatry, and are destined for self-destruction. When such civilizations collapse, the emptied cities crumble and are given over to become the dwelling places of things like owls and jackals.

In the painting that evolved from the sketch, I opted to include the longleaf pine and added a second tree growing up next to it. Lichens grow on the bark of a southern magnolia on the left, including the red-ornamented Christmas Lichen that is so common in Florida swamps. This tree is adorned with other lichen species, as well as with resurrection fern; and you can tell that it has rained not long ago, because the ferns’ fronds are a lively green, saturated with water and fully unfurled. When there hasn’t been rain, the resurrection fern takes on a shriveled, deceptively dead look, waiting out the dry season for its time to arise. The leaflets of these ferns sport a series of paired, raised bumps on the upper surface (not beneath as with spores) that look so orderly it is almost as if a draftsman had laid them out with meticulous precision.

The tree on the right side of the painting supports a trumpet vine, a native plant of the American Southeast that flourishes in the bits and pieces of land along rivers, ditches, and power line right-of-ways, where it climbs with unmatched determination towards the sun and presents fiery, trumpet like blooms in the highest places to sustain migratory hummingbirds and the large solitary bumble bees.

I didn’t choose to include its leaves and flowers here, but I did include a runner with its characteristic clinging roots, hinting at the presence of flowers and leaves somewhere high above.

This scene is further enhanced with delicate wild orchids, Encyclia tampensis, growing on the tree behind the owl; in Florida these usually bloom in June, in the wilderness and places seldom travelled.

In the background is a stunning sky of magenta, violet purple and blue. It is set with promising, emerging stars, while the last rays of the setting sun gild the limb on which the owl is perching in a warm, golden glow.

—— Susan A. Walton

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