His name is Travis Keese. He paints. In fact, he has become one of the sought-after wild life artists around. He is interesting. He is in love with the Texas hill country. Best of all, he is a Christian.

The hill country he so loves is indeed beautiful. This part of Texas has rolling hills, lots of live oak, and cypress, and short stubby underbrush. It is a land where the azure blue sky serves as an appropriate backdrop for an ever-changing panorama of almost inundating hills, an occasional butte, and lots of small, abbreviated mountains. In the Spring, the wildflowers come staged in courses, beginning with breath-taking Bluebonnets. About the time the Texas state flower has adorned the hillsides and roadsides with a coat of blue, the Indian Paint Brushes come along to further enliven the already beautiful color scheme with their reddish-orange contribution. In late Spring, when warmer weather comes, in comes the appearance of tiny, deep yellow Daises, the ones that are just right for the “he-loves me-he-loves- me-not” calculations. The land is sliced at various places with little streams that trickle over colorful rocks and run playfully over slopping hills, all of them converging eventually at larger rivers with Spanish sounding names like Guadalupe or Perdernales.

The birds in the hill country sing as if they had rehearsed their productions. Their dozens of ever-changing tones and ever various tempos flow along, seemingly without ever bumping into one another. The state bird reigns over the orchestral phenomenon with his impressive ability to emulate all the others. What you heard may not have been a Bob White or Whippoorwill at all, but the Lone Star State’s own Mocking Bird, who seems to be getting everyone all tuned up for the day’s concert. Late in the evening the birds relinquish the stage to the fireflies who seem to show to want to show how to measure the depth of the darkness by tiny pulsations of light.

I watched Travis Keese paint. It was fascinating. His canvas was the reflecting place for a lovely scene from the rugged Big Bend country. Huge, jagged mountains cut through a hazy blue sky in his background. The stony ground and bristly underbrush around the rocks were painted in with varying hues of brown, green, and an almost harsh gray, lending shadows to the scene. At one side of a clump of some tall grama grass, which had been baked to a toasty brown in the harsh Texas sun, there was a large rock which was so accurately painted that it looked like a photograph. At the other side of the clump there was a short, stumpy cactus, proudly displaying among its thorns its yellow bloom–a one day event each year. Behind the rock a twisted, gnarled mesquite bush lies rotting in the desert heat.

Travis was painting wild turkeys, admittedly one of his favorite wildlife creatures, and in this instance, the undisputed star of the show. There are four of them. They are situated as if they had deliberately chosen the big rock to form some protection as they foraged through the area. Right now there is only a rough sketch of the birds, but with every stroke of his brush more life comes into them. Already you sense the excitement , the carefully calculated movements, the intense, but timid steps of the birds. It’s a joy to watch them come to life.

His strokes are short, strategic as he paints in row after row of varicolored plumage on the majestic birds. You can see the depth of the feathers begin to take shape as he fills the sketched areas with life- giving strokes–and all with what seems to be a half-filled brush. With just the right motion, just the right angle, just the right tone, he causes the gorgeous creatures to form right before my eyes. The reflection in the eyes, the slightly crooked feather on the back of one of the birds quickly does away with any thought of perfection, making it life-like. The almost iridescent blues, purples, and greens are applied with an almost nonchalance as a look at life in the wild takes shape on the canvas.

And all this with his left hand!

Aren’t you glad God gave us an aesthetic nature so that we can enjoy color, appreciate beauty, imbibe of the refreshment of the beautiful world He created? And what about the talent he gave some people–like Travis Keese–to paint it for us so that we can enjoy the scene over and over?

“The heavens delcare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard” (Psalm 19:1-2). How true. How very true.

–Dee Bowman