Canopies (again)

2024

Since 2019, I’ve obsessed over the language of trees and nature. I have pushed the subject, and how I approach it- but have always wondered: is that unbridled and immediate first approach still there? what does this look like after five years and hundreds of paintings later?

The earliest marks of this series started in my sketchbook in the summer of 2023, during a forced displacement from my studio. I would sit on the daybed in our rental home and draw the giant oak outside, keenly aware her presence was daily encouragment during an unsettled season.

I had taken notes from the last time- I had the urge to preserve as much as I could from those first marks. But to also allow myself to delight in the earthy colors that give me life, in the paint itself. Let the brush talk, and kindly stop thinking already. Allow her to impact me and with gratitude, document in paint.

As I returned to these trees, it felt like that same moment in the studio, five years ago, when I first allowed these pieces to spill out of me.

This is canopies, again.

i spent last summer with her

i spent last summer with her. i was feeling restless and unsettled. she was anything but: deeply rooted and overseeing the same patch of grass she had been for at least one hundred years.

she seemed to grow sideways, her trunk sprawling across the yard, a home to at least three different kinds of ferns. it was hard to tell, as the root ball crossed the fence into the neighbors side. I had never seen a tree grow like that.

she whispered to me her secrets, revealing her resilience. how she refused to die, how she changed, split, and turned. her tenacity was her story, dozens of decades documented in her branches.

she had silently grown there, unashamedly taking up space, knowing her presence was beautiful. offering shade and shelter and wisdom, always softly.

i spent last summer with her. i left as quickly as i came, but she remained.

cling to the first marks

as they are the lyrics most honest.

The first time I heard myself say it was early 2020, the part of 2020 that still felt like the year before. “I wish I could leave those earliest marks as significant parts of the painting itself.” I was writing to a critique group and our mentor, Lauren Frances Evans, highlighted my words.

It’s not just that those marks are invigorating. That they communicate instinct and energy in a way more refined markmaking just can’t. I mean, they are and they do, and I really value such things in my work. But it’s deeper than that.

They seem to reach back to our deepest truths. The things our eight year old selves innocently adored. Our loud voices, before we learned to tame them. Instinct and intuition, before the “shoulds” stomped them into submission.

Perhaps we can heal by reconnecting with those gestures. Or, find a sense of well being rooted in the quiet pace of a garden instead of the sprint of regimens, purchases, and expectations. Maybe we need more stillness, more play- but not at the expense of sleep. Maybe our “voice” has been there the whole time.

I don’t have the answers. But I am asking the questions 🖤

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