An osprey swooped low over artist Mark Messersmith’s head, with a fish tightly secured in its talons. He followed the bird’s flight across the sky, intently watching as an eagle pursued it in a hurried chase hoping for an easy meal.

An iteration of that particular scene ended up in one of his paintings, along with many other encounters from the St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge. In another instance, a bobcat strolled leisurely past Messersmith as he silently painted in almost- stillness.

“It’s impressive to see those animals in the wild,” says Messersmith, whose populous paintings boast all varieties of Floridian flora and fauna.

These quiet moments burst in prismatic splendor on his canvas — straying away from the earth tones, Messersmith opts for a shimmering, saturated palette. His paintings are far from simplified eye-candy, however, as the juxtaposed images contemplate the fate of these natural wonders and the beings that inhabit them.

Hailing from the Midwest farming belt, Messersmith grew up surrounded by cornfields and manicured lawns. It wasn’t until he moved to Florida that he experienced alligators and big birds sauntering about his everyday surroundings.

Investigating this relationship with nature is at the heart of his solo exhibition, “When No One is Watching,” which will feature an opening reception at the Gadsden Arts Center and Museum on Sept. 28.

“I was taken with the fact that those things are still out there on a cusp between existence and nonexistence,” says Messersmith. “The paintings are about that moment while they’re still here hanging on, and our choice of preserving them or continuing on with what we’re doing.”

A Tallahassee resident of the past 30 years, Messersmith is an art professor at Florida State University. He wasn’t truly exposed to art until he attended college and graduate school, and received the encouragement and support of his father and many instructors along that way.

Just as a scientist engages in daily experimentation, Messersmith spends his time outside the classroom in his studio. Working with students will often spur “crazy insights,” in a continual, reciprocal relationship that fuels his creative research and investigative processes. Messersmith never walks into the studio expecting to do something he’s never done before, and instead builds off a foundation of previous explorations.

“You don’t ever want to get it perfect,” remarks Messersmith. “You always want to think that tomorrow, ‘I’ll do it better,’ and there’s always a tomorrow.”

Starting with a seed of an idea from a field book or image he’s encountered, he begins painting until the rest of the characters fall into place. Messersmith describes the process as a three-way dialogue between painter, canvas and subject matter. The “primal-ness” of the paint has kept him fascinated with the medium as he enjoys the simplicity of only needing oils, pigment and cloth.

He’s been described as a post-modern romantic painter and admits that he resides somewhere between “happy and apocalyptic.” Messersmith is drawn to the northeastern painters who traveled to Florida by railroad at the turn of the century, like Martin Johnson Heade who depicted dreamy scenes of an untouched sea and landscape.

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