Local artist Steve Seneca holds his painting of a tractor hauling sugar cane carts to a mill. The painting is the official poster for the 2013 Louisiana Sugar Cane Festival and Fair. 

On a sunny afternoon in fall, a cart travels down a dirt road to deliver sugar cane to Cajun Sugar Co-op. Sugar cane stalks surround the cart as it heads to the mill as smoke billows out of the mill’s stacks.

The scene is a painting by local artist Steve Seneca, 54. The painting is the official poster of the Louisiana Sugar Cane Festival and Fair Association for the 72nd festival, which beings Sept. 25 and ends Sept. 29.

Seneca grew up a half mile from Cajun Sugar Co-op. His father helped to build the sugar mill in the early 1960s, he said.

He painted the poster two years ago, he said. Someone from the association came across the painting on his website and asked him if the association could use it to represent the festival.

Seneca said he was looking for something iconic to paint.

“Sugar mills are kind of becoming extinct. There are only 11 left in the state,” he said. “When an artist is looking for things to paint, he is always looking for iconic things or an angle. This angle, with the road curving into the cane with the mill in the background, was just right. It was the perfect angle for a painting.”

Festival president Jessie Breaux said the painting is a “fitting depiction of what’s getting ready to happen in New Iberia and throughout the state.”

“The poster depicts what it’s all about — the factory and the fields and what occurs late September to early January, which is harvest time,” Breaux said.

Seneca also painted a classic New Iberia scene for the Greater Iberia Chamber of Commerce’s Gumbo Cook-Off poster.

“As an artist, this is another step in being recognized,” Seneca said. “To have two is really a blessing.”

Seneca completed his first oil painting more than 30 years ago, he said, but it wasn’t until 10 years ago that he became serious about painting.

“When I look back on my life when I’m 70, I don’t want to say, ‘What if,’ ” he said. “We have to reach further than we think we can and try to accomplish our goals.”

Seneca is selling the posters himself. They are available at Paul’s Flower & Plant Shop, Jungle Gardens and Sir Speedy.

He works full-time at Cargill but said painting is more than a hobby — it’s chasing a dream.