I became interested when I saw in The Meridian Star that the winning painting in the annual Peoples Choice Contest sponsored by the Meridian Museum of Art was won by someone who painted a wild turkey.

That person is Linda Baxter of Choctaw County, Alabama, as I was to learn.

Of course, I had to see the painting so I went down to Lucas Road Gallery where the painting was located, and met with Neuburn Atkinson there. I had asked Linda to meet me there as well and she soon arrived.

Her painting was of a true Eastern species, and the details which clearly labeled the bird as Eastern, (the bird we have here in the South), were all there, the pale, tan tips to the big tail feathers right there just as they are supposed to be.

The four primary species in the nation are the Rio Grande of Texas and Oklahoma, the Merriams of the western mountains, the Osceola of Florida and the Eastern – which is native to many eastern and southern states. Occasionally a Mexican species exists along the border but the numbers are insignificant.

I was surprised to meet Baxter and see a woman so young who had several paintings that had won contests in the past.

I figured she had developed her skills quickly, until she told me about her grandchildren. I was shocked… She  could easily pass for someone in her early 30s. I didn’t ask her age.

When we looked at her painting, I knew I wanted to write about her art, thinking she had painted turkeys before. When I learned that this was her first one, I was really impressed.

Baxter actually works in Butler. We met in Meridian on Saturday after she had a shopping trip with her mother and her husband, Calvin, rode with me on the long trip to the far northeast corner of Choctaw County.

Calvin is a turkey hunter and we swapped stories during the drive over and had a grand time talking turkeys.

I learned that the Baxters live at the end of the road in just about the least populated part of all of Alabama. At the end of a long driveway sat a beautiful home that few persons have ever seen.

At the back edge of a large yard is a beautiful studio, well designed with unfinished timbers put together by the skilled hands of Calvin.

Scattered tastefully throughout the large work studio are paintings of people, and buildings, and just about everything that artists paint and I saw nothing that was not very skillfully done.

Here is where Baxter does her work. Here in the outback. In the total quiet, peaceful woodland setting where the silence is deafening and the beautiful things around her come alive in their finest colors.