Spirits of the Trees – Espíritus de los Arboles

Spirits of the Trees – Espiritus de los Arboles

 

I first created about 40 of these paintings in the late 1990s. I exhibited them at Alper’s Fine Art, in Andover, MA in 2001. It was a very popular series. I sold most of them, and also did a few commissions. It wasn’t until I came to Mexico, almost 20 years later, that I got the urge to explore this idea again. I started hunting for weathered, interesting pieces of wood (often the most difficult part of the process) on a friend’s beautiful, unspoiled property, consisting of a wide valley surrounded by stunning mountains. The land is aptly named, El Milagro, The Miracle. We found a great cache of wood on the mountain where, during the torrential rainy season, the water had washed it into a now dry stream bed. I have also found some good pieces at El Charco, the botanical garden in San Miguel de Allende.

The initial inspiration for this work has remained the same. Whenever I’ve seen an old, impressive tree, I have felt the presence of a living entity and will stand quietly transfixed by its beauty and life force. In using paint the subtle colors of the wood that I find, I try to paint a face that looks like it is the tree spirit inhabiting and emanating from within the piece of wood. I realized that these paintings also reflect a different cycle of the tree’s life, that of weathering and slowly decaying and turning back into earth, becoming a memorial, in a way, to that particular tree and its spirit.