Artist Statement Arboressence

I have always been a lover of trees and a 2020 artist’s residency gave me focused time to study Dendrology and to translate what I learned into the encaustic paintings that emerged. The Arboressence series was created during, and following, that amazing residency in a magical forest of the Pacific Northwest. I truly love trees even more now that I know so many more wondrous things about them.

As work progressed on this series, I felt the energetic essence of the trees flowing out into the landscape and the sky that surrounds the forest. You know how the air feels different when you walk into the trees? How you can feel the quality of aliveness that flows forth from the trees? I was tuning in to the vibrations of trees and the sounds they make to communicate with each other, a liminal space, that sparked my minds imaginings of the chakras of trees and the expansiveness of the energy they emit into our environment.

As I continued exploring the energies and luminous quality of trees, very specific energetic qualities that I sense from trees in wintertime began to emerge. How can it seem that trees almost crackle with energy and aliveness despite the freezing air glistening with frost? The warmth of that energetic quality and how it radiates outward I visualized as golden rings glowing and vibrating into to the cool, dark night.

The works in this series also lend focus to the symbiotic relationship of fungi and trees. Fungi and trees have so much to teach us about sharing responsibility to care for each other and creating a harmonious community.  Scientists tell us how fungi (mycelium) feed and care for trees and trees feed and care for fungi along with other magical and amazing ways they communicate and weave networks under the forest floor. The unseen riches of nature never cease to astound me.

The Arboressence series headed in a more visionary direction, but, I enjoyed just going with the flow letting each painting tell me what it needed to say. Trees have so much to teach us about patience and perseverance. If we can slow down and be still, maybe we can be quiet enough to listen for their wisdom.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all."
~Herman Hesse

For an Artist talk about the Arboressence series click here.