My largest piece to date, this depiction of a live oak, viewed peering up through the branches from below, captures the feeling of standing inside the canopy of one of these great trees.

When I began I wasn’t sure how I would approach the leaves convincingly without getting overly detailed. The result, with the murky brown branch meandering through, looks as much like leaves and sky as it does water and islands in the marshes of the river delta. Imaging this as an overhead view looking down, I see the satellite photos and maps my father and great-grandfather kept on their walls of the marshlands of Delacroix where we took the boat to fish.