Millie Martin, the featured artist of the 2011 Winyah Bay Heritage Festival, describes her work this way:
"My paintings depict the mood and scenery of our splendid Southeastern coast. I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, and spent years on Pawleys Island, South Carolina. I attempt to borrow the beauty of the Lowcountry to display color, light, and texture in an impressionist style; and to bring the viewer into the world of endless coastlines, rivers, woods, and gardens where imagination and memory play havoc with reality. My ultimate artistic goal is to paint beautiful pictures that remind the viewer of wonderful places and happy times."
The painting done by Martin for the festival is currently on exhibit in a section of the Georgetown County Museum's main gallery dedicated to Georgetown's fine sporting heritage. Nestled among "Caines Boys"
decoys and vintage photos from the area's many hunting and fishing clubs, it will remain on display until the festival on Jan.15 & 16, 2011, when it will be auctioned to the highest bidder.
The painting shows a weathered rice trunk and Santee Delta storm tower at Moorland Plantation. As Archibald Rutledge once described the
location: "Here, one encounters the romantic ruin of a peculiar tower on Moorland – a 'slave-tower,' wherein slaves working the rice fields might take refuge in case of a sudden tropical storm. This vast region was once almost a solid rice field; and today the banks remain, and the canals and ditches. In the heads of the canals, the 'trunk-docks'
as they are called, is the most unbelievably good fishing – for bream, bass, green mormouth, gaudy perch."
