I’m currently reading “The Global Forest” by Diana Beresford-Kroeger, a wonderful book about how trees can save us from our impending disastrous environmental future. Healthy forests are critical to the survival of life on this planet, and the medicinal and spiritual benefits of trees are essential to the wellbeing and health of humans as well all life, its all connected. So I have always felt compelled to draw and paint trees, probably because I grew up in the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest, and will continue this theme on my artist journey.

Cascading Conifer is Acrylic on Canvas and at 48″ x 60″ is the biggest easel painting I have done to date. This image was inspired by a walk in Whatcom Falls Park, as many of my paintings are. I was attracted to the repeating cascading imagery of the green boughs juxtaposed with the skeletal branches, also the twin tree trunks, one basked in warm light, the other hidden in cool shadow. I’m excited by the tension created using warm and cool colors and how the colors enhance the spacial integrity of a painting.

Trees are often unintended metaphors representing people in my paintings, usually not conciously realized by me until the painting is finished and I look at it in its entirety.

The three images above are all individual paintings by me from over the years: the middle piece “Eagle Tree” is a graphite drawing completed in 1988. The left image, “Three Cedars,” is a small watercolor I painted about 15 years ago. Once the painting was finished I realized it was about my mother, the three cedar trees are her survivng children, the raven looking out of the painting represented my brother who had passed away, the spirit who had flown, and the river was my mother, nourishing us all. The painting on the right is another watercolor painted in 1994, a portrait of my young son leaning against a massive ancient tree trunk, holding a twig and lost in childhood contemplation.

I hope Humanity will come to a realization that this finite planet which is our home, is a living organism, everything is connected. The forests give us oxygen and soak up carbon dioxide, they store and regulate water, cool our warming planet, nourish our spirituality and provide food and medicine. For future generations sake we need to preserve what forests we have left and replenish what we have destroyed.

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