Texas oaks and blue bonnets 9×12 oil on linen 2018
by Cherylann (aka Cheri)
We flew into cosmopolitan Dallas and drove to stylish San Antonio, Texas, to visit our “kin” in 1993.
You see, my mother Joan (aka Josie) was born in Dallas in 1930; her father Nathan (aka Jimmie) had been born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1900; her mother Rosalie (aka Rosie) had been born in Anna, Texas, in 1900.
A whole lot of “kin” from the Lone Star State. Perhaps you have seen the tee-shirt with the logo on it which says, “Don’t Mess With Texas.” It’s true. They have sense of self and state as big as, well, Texas !
Our daughter Sara decided to attend SMU (Southern Methodist University) in 1992 to please her grandmother and please her she did.
She stayed in Texas for four years, completed her degree in English, and came home to California where the humidity level is below 50% most of the time.
Here in California, we have been spoiled by the raw beauty and variety of our topography. From the redwoods in Humboldt County to the Pacific Ocean near Carmel to the walls of granite in Yosemite National Park to the stark desert of Death Valley–California is a cornucopia of eye candy.
Texas can boast of its own beauty and certainly one of the most stunning landscapes the eyes can see is the highway between Dallas and San Antonio in the spring when all of the blue bonnets that Ladybird Johnson had planted to beautify what was once a rather barren landscape.
When we drove that highway in 1993, we passed at least 50 wedding parties having their wedding photography in the middle of a field of blue bonnets. We had Sara get out of the car so I could take a picture of her in such an environment.
Bluish purple, light blue, lavender–these little flowers with white tips cover the soft rolling hills like a mystical carpet of blue.
Also present in the Texas Hill Country are the oaks, my favorite trees.
My next painting will be of a stately oak here on our road, one which I have been walking by for 25 years.
CheriBlockSabrawFineArt 