‘These Treasured Things ~ Box Turtle,’ copyright Susan A. Walton

Image size : 12 1/2 x 9 3/4

Paper size : 16 1/2 x 13 3/4

Edition size : 200

Artist’s note :

Who did not enjoy discovering, during our childhood explorations of field and forest, an occasional box turtle? These amazing reptiles emerge from cover in the spring and I often found them in our strawberry patch gulping down ripe berries and sunning themselves. Some enterprising individuals even dug homes for themselves in that patch and spent all season there. I am sure they had their fill of those delicious strawberries, but since they also serve as pest control, it is a small price to pay.

When I was older and hunting for morel mushrooms with some friends, we once found a hollow in a forest where there were turtles everywhere. I am not sure what brought all of those turtles together at the same place and time, but it was a strange sight to behold so many normally solitary creatures. Did they all happen to choose this hollow as protection from winter chill and just emerge from their winter cover at the same time? Or did they all find this spot a great place to pick up a date for mating season? Or were they out there, as we mushroom hunters are, seeking the same delightful morels? I don’t know the answer, but if they can converge on the one strawberry patch to be found in over in a square mile, surely finding each other, or finding the best of anything they desire, would not be much of a challenge. Perhaps their taste for fine mushrooms is as keen as ours.

I painted this one as it appeared in that pretty little hollow in the woods. The space was thick with delicate, flowering Dutchman’s Breeches and aglow with sunlight illuminating the various colored fallen leaves that carpeted the ground.

Dutchman’s Breeches is a wildflower that heralds the arrival of the morel hunting season in the Midwest, so they seemed a natural fit for the painting, which was originally created for a special mushroom-hunting friend who was with us when we found the little glen full of box turtles.

#BoxTurtleArt #LimitedEditionPrint #MorelMushrooms