"FLORIDA EVERGLADES STUDY # 3"

The Painting:
This is an actual scene, deep in the Florida Everglades.

The artist, R.Geddings, painted and signed this oil in 2007.

The artist has captured a beautiful Florida day with authenic Everglades foliage, birds in flight, and an Egret looking for a meal near a small islet-clump of old foliage.

As you can see, the artist has also captured the beautiful colors of the Florida sky along with reflections and shadows in the water.

This scene certainly gives the viewer a feeling relaxing tranquility !

Note of Interest:
National parks are not islands of land. Outside events shape their fates. Water management is the critical issue for the Everglades, whose watershed begins in central Florida's Kissimmee River basin. Summer storms flooding there once started a shallow, wide river flowing southward to the Gulf of Mexico. Elaborate water controls now disrupt the natural flow. Shortage of clean water at critical seasons, and in the correct quantities, the Everglades will die.

South Florida's freshwater supply comes from rain on the Kissimmee River basin and southward, mostly in May through October. Evaporation, transpiration, and runoff consume four-fifths of the rain, which may total 40 to 65 inches per year.

Slow and rain-driven, the natural cycle of freshwater circulation historically built up in shallow Lake Okeechobee. It averages 12 feet deep and covers 730 square miles.

Thus began the flow of the wide, shallow "River of Grass." Fifty miles wide in places, one to three feet deep in the slough's center but only 6 inches deep elsewhere, it flowed south 100 feet per day across Everglades saw grass toward mangrove estuaries of the Gulf of Mexico. A six-month dry season followed.

Everglades plants and animals are adapted to alternating wet and dry seasons. Water cycle disruptions ruin crucial feeding and nesting conditions.

During the dry season (December to April), water levels gradually drop. Fish migrate to deeper pools. Birds, alligators, and other predators concentrate around the pools to feed on a varied menu of fish, amphibians, and reptiles. This abundant food source is vital to many wading birds who are nesting during the dry season.

In May, spring thunderstorms signal the beginning of the wet season. A winter landscape dotted with pools of water yields to a summer landscape almost completely covered with water. Wildlife disperses throughout the park. Insects, fish, and alligators repopulate the 'glades, thus replenishing the food chain. By December, the rains cease and the dry cycle begins again.