Montana

Trees represent Life itself and the balance between what is real and impalpable. The Earth and the Sky. Trees hold ancient secrets and although completely different from us they in many ways resemble us.

Trees each harbour their own character and personality. Some are artists through and through within bark and trunks as their branches twist and turn above them in a sort of delirious dance.Others are austere and as stiff and rigid as inflexible soldiers or statesman. Some are fragile and timid and barely visible. Their bark can be soft and smooth as a child’s skin or as wrinkled and weathered as the face of an aging adventurer or seafarer. Trees and rocks, fields and flowers exist in a world apart. A silent community of living beings that observe and bear witness to our lives. As they watch us the trees keep their secrets and husband their knowledge. They are, in the words of the Ancients , “The Guardians of the Temple”. Charles Baudelaire, a French writer and poet wrote: “ The natural world is a temple inhabited by living pillars that sometimes utter barely intelligible words and phrases. Men walk through these forests throughout their lives as the trees watch over them”. These symbols, these forests and fields are disappearing little by little. This is why I feel compelled to paint them.