Fraser West - Painting the southern coast: the art of West Fraser

PAINTING THE SOUTHERN COAST

THE ART OF WEST FRASER

With Introductory Essays by
Jean Stern and Martha R. Severens

2016 West Fraser

Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208

www.sc.edu/uscpress

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/

ISBN: 978-1-61117-694-0 (cloth)
ISBN: 978-1-61117-695-7 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-61117-696-4 (ebook)

TITLE PAGE IMAGE:

Tidal Pool

2007 | 11" 14" OIL | DAWS ISLAND, S.C.
LATITUDE 3218'29.37"N : LONGITUDE 8045'28.37"W
COLLECTION OF BILLYO AND PEGGY ODONNELL

FRONT COVER ILLUSTRATION: Sunlight, 2014, Ossabaw Island, Ga.,
latitude 3144'6.07"N : longitude 817'14.70"W, collection of
Darrel and Carol Johnson

I dedicate this book to the three men who influenced and molded my interests and character. My fathers best friend, Olin S. Fraser, shared his passion for making things with his hands. My uncle, Charles E. Fraser, shared his intellectual curiosity and showed me how to think outside the box. My father, Joseph Bacon Fraser Jr., shared his passion for the outdoors and taught me about a good work ethic, humility, and strength of resolve. From his example, I finally learned how to be a loving husband, father, and gentleman. Most important, he helped me believe in myself. All three shared their passion for history and instilled in me the need for ethical stewardship of the land. All three are greatly missed.

Sidney Lanier

Jean Stern

MAP A: THE SOUTHEAST COAST NORTH AMERICA:
Winyah Bay, South Carolina, to St. Augustine, Florida

West Fraser

Marjory Wentworth

Martha R. Severens

MAP #1/PLATES 118:
Winyah Bay and Santee River Delta, Including McClellanville, South Carolina

MAP #2/PLATES 1965:
Charleston Region, Including Rockville and Edisto Island, South Carolina

MAP #3/PLATES 66146:
Port Royal Sound Basin, Including Edisto Beach, Spring Island, and Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina

MAP #4/PLATES 147179:
Savannah to St. Catherines Island, Georgia

MAP #5/PLATES 180189:
Sapelo Island to Brunswick, Georgia, Including Darien, Sea Island, and St. Simons Island

MAP #6/PLATES 190218:
Cumberland Island, Georgia, Including Fernandina Beach, Florida

MAP #7/PLATES 219225:
Little Talbot Island to St. Augustine, Florida

Plate B

Spanish Roots

2008 | 30" 36" OIL | DARIEN, GA.
LATITUDE 3122'15.54"N : LONGITUDE 8126'18.05"W
COLLECTION OF MR. AND MRS. GEORGE DEAN JOHNSON JR.

Sidney Lanier (18421881)

GLOOMS of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven

With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven

Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,

Emerald twilights,

Virginal shy lights,

Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,

When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades

Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,

Of the heavenly woods and glades,

That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within

The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;

Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,

Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,

Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,

Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,

Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,

Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine,

While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine

Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine;

But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,

And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,

And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem

Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,

Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,

And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke

Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,

And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,

And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,

That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn

Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore

When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,

And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain

Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,

Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face

The vast sweet visage of space.

To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,

Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,

For a mete and a mark

To the forest-dark:

So:

Affable live-oak, leaning low,

Thuswith your favorsoft, with a reverent hand,

(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!)

Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand

On the firm-packed sand,

Free

By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.

Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band

Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land.

Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl

As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows

the firm sweet limbs of a girl.

Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,

Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.

And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?

The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!

A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,

Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,

Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,

To the terminal blue of the main.

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?

Somehow my soul seems suddenly free

From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,

By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free

Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,

Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won

God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain

And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,

Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:

I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies