Treeology
After having spent 35 years living, working and creating art in an urban environment, I felt it was time to move on and turn once again to nature and its boundless creative possibilities. Through my years working as a freelance photographer where I occasionally worked in the agriculture and forestry sector my desire to return to this milieu with my paints and pastels was almost overwhelming. My desires finally came to fruition when I had the opportunity to move to the Southwest region of France. I had been struck by the extraordinary beauty of its nature in general and of its details in particular. The hanging lichen on the old oaks in winter, the brilliant greens of their mossy coats and the crackled textures of their thick bark. It struck me how these old trees were not so dissimilar to sprawling cities with their roadways of branches crisscrossing on their way towards the light and open sky. Upon those branches were living organisms moving through their daily existence much as people in cities. The closer I looked the more my eyes perceived multitudes of colours… browns and greys of trunks were in reality composed of purples, violets, blues of all different hues. And all these colours changed and rearranged themselves according to the season, time of day or weather conditions.
