My Dreher Island Artist in Residence Experience!
This year, I had the opportunity to be the artist in residence at Dreher Island State Park!
It was an incredible 6 day experience of painting in my little makeshift studio in a screened in porch overlooking Lake Murray. Each day, my husband and I took the canoe out onto the lake to explore the shoreline and observe the various birds that call Lake Murray home. We saw Osprey, Bald Eagles, Geese, Great Blue Herons, Ducks, and more. Each evening I watched the beautiful sunset and listened to the countless cicadas.
Going into this residency, I really had no idea what I was going to paint to represent Dreher Island. But, I got my reference photo within an hour of being there!
As many know, this year had two broods of cicadas. I love the sound of cicadas, but they hadn’t reached my home in Columbia yet. I was hoping they would be in Dreher Island and they did not disappoint! When I arrived at the cabin, I first noticed the large amount of cicadas on the ground (dead 😭). I went to the lake’s edge and noticed a beautiful flowering bush along the shore. I immediately wanted to paint this with the lake in the background, so I started snapping some pictures. Then a fabulous idea popped into my head... At my feet were hundreds of dead cicadas (I know... eww). What a perfect and unique subject to paint!! So I picked one of them up by its wing and staged the poor guy on the bush! Yup. That was it. There’s my reference!
I got to work on my sketch and made a decent amount of progress on the painting while I was at the cabin. This painting was a bit different for me, because I was trying to get a blurred background effect which is quite difficult to do with fast drying acrylic paints. The results aren’t perfect, but good thing I don’t strive for perfection in my paintings!
Once I deliver the painting to Dreher Island, you should be able to view it in their tackle shop/visitor center in the park. I am so honored to add my painting to the wonderful collection of works from past artist in residencies!
You can also purchase prints of this painting here! Since I painted this on a 12x24 canvas, and that ratio would make very awkward print sizes, I decided to crop the painting to focus on the cicada since that is the main subject.
See the other resident artists in the AIR program with SC State Parks here: https://southcarolinaparks.com/stories/meet-the-artists-2024-artist-in-residence