| Watercolors of the interiors of Florida hammocks, woods and pine forests, banks, coves, the Homosassa River, the Everglades, Florida's skies and beaches, and paintings of New Mexico's skies and mountains. | ||||
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Artist's Biography Prices Upon Request |
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| Artist's Biography: Frances de Courcy Mercer | ||
| Completing a Master of Fine Arts from the San
Francisco Art Institute in painting and displaying her works in several
one woman shows, Frances de Courcy Mercer, a native of Florida, longed for
her roots and the green flat lands of grasses called the Everglades. In
1976 she left California and returned to South Florida, where she began
gathering familiar images of palm and cypress hammocks, cabbage palms and
palmetto clusters, all of those evergreens indigenous to South and Central
Florida. First, Mercer painted a series of South Florida winter skies, and
then she turned her attention to the Everglades and its palmettos, pine
and grasses which comprise its vast "River of Grass". In 1985 after having
taught art and art history for some years, Mercer began a series of these
Everglades watercolors, which she continues to this day. In 1996 Frances de Courcy Mercer was able to move from South Florida to a 3500 acre compound and game preserve named Indian Hammock. Located in Central Florida, Indian Hammock affords her thousands of ever changing images of Florida skies and landscapes. Some of these scenes are cottony, white cumulous clouds drifting through ultramarine space, interiors of hammocks drenched in yellow sunlight or silent, gray fog, slew's filled with hyacinths and ducks, fields of cows and pine forests of deer, banks of cool ferns bordering purple green streams and each image changing according to the amount of light at any given time of the day. This compound is a refuge for the artist and for those who love the old Florida as it used to be, with its wildlife and natural fields: woods, trees, ponds and streams preserved for all time. The word "hammock" comes from the Spanish word, "hamaca" meaning a highly arable type of soil. I like to think of the Spaniards blazing their trails through the Florida hammocks. The hammocks were the same then as now, and will be the same forever if men can be induced to leave them alone. Hammock soil is dark and rich, made up of centuries of accumulation of humus from the droppings of leaves. The hammock is marked by its trees, and these are the live oak, the palm, the sweet gum, the holly, the ironwood and the hickory and magnolia. We have high hammock and low hammock and oak hammock and palm hammock, and there is likely to be a body of water nearby. . the "hamaca" shares with marsh and swamp the great mystery of Florida. 1 1 Rawlins, Marjorie Kinnan, Cross Creek, p. 42 |
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