Heads Up!

As I was painting Wednesday the snake in the photo above slithered right up next to me. He was about two feet from my two feet. Had invaded my personal space. As creepy as they look, theoretically they are about harmless as a bag of cotton balls. But, after seeing one, your concentration is shot. You spend an inordinate amount of time checking the ground. Checking the ground. Checking the ground. I was turkey hunting with a friend one time and we were "sneaking up" on one and were crawling along veeeery quietly. I eased up in to position and got settled and then my buddy eased up into position. Unfortunately his position was on the end of a vine that due to some physics equation moved on the other end, my position. Have you ever seen a vine move in the woods? All it needed was a forked tongue. I flinched so bad I pulled muscles and let out a noise like a 6 yr. old girl on Christmas morning. The rest of the hunt I spent checking the ground, checking the ground, checking the ground. I think I even checked the floor board of my truck a couple of times on the way home after that one.

The paintings are from the previous week and the two at the bottom were painted yesterday with the Chestnut Group for a show they are having at the end of April of the historic buildings and areas in Columbia Tennessee. The two you see are of the courthouse and the building in profile is from the old Columbia Military Academy which was one of the premier military schools in the nation at one time. The plaque on the front says it is the old Guard House but its architectural demeanor leads me to believe it was designed to keep something in or something out. Maybe an arsenal or brig. If those walls could talk.