“Reprieve ~ House Finches & Buck Brush,” an original painting copyright Susan A Walton, S. A. Walton Studio, Hudson, Florida.

Artist’s note:

A pair of house finches take a moment of rest on a buck brush branch on a drizzly fall day.

I had emerged from the woods a bit east of our favorite hickory tree, a big Shagbark that was unfortunately for us, also the favorite of every squirrel in the valley. When I showed up, a flock of house finches rose and scattered from where they had been foraging in a large swath of buckbrush that grew there between a few widely scattered black walnut trees.

The hickory overlooked a grassy hillside that descended down to the little creek that ran from behind the house, tractor shed and chicken house, to our pretty blue pond with a spring in it, and then eventually to Cedar Creek.

It wasn’t raining that day, but a while later I did see the buckbrush in the rain and light fog and thought it would be worth painting. Many of my paintings begin simply as botanicals of wild flowers or plants whose beauty is often overlooked and callously mowed down, so sometimes I feel obligated to draw or paint plants before that happens.

I see these overlooked things as gifts of God which we haven’t yet studied enough to understand. It’s rude to discard gifts without even taking the time to unwrap them, so I like to focus more on that which is overlooked or ignored rather than on the flashy and popular, to show people that beauty isn’t merely a property of something we look at but a property of the way we look at the world. The things we notice, and more importantly the things we fail to notice, say a lot about us, about our character as individuals and as a people; about our values and our spirit.

Everything and every one has value, a purpose, after all, whether we are aware of it our not, and before cutting it down (or before being tempted to cut someone down) we should take a moment to reflect on the action, its repercussions, and what it demonstrates about us to the observer.

Everything has a purpose, even if it is only to hold up a pair of birds that need a rest.

- Susan A. Walton