The aim of my art is to celebrate the flora. All of us are aware of the immeasurable value of the products of plants, from food and medicine to furniture, but my art celebrates an aspect of the flora that owes nothing to the industry of humanity. I want to celebrate an oak tree for what it is, not for what we make of it. If I am painting an oak I want it to be in the context of its natural neighbors and I want it to be in good form˜tall and straight if it is a Red Oak from a northern forest; spreading and low to the ground if it is a California Live Oak. These features of context and form tell a story of the place of each plant in the world. Scientists call it the natural history of the species.
Honoring the history that brought each magnificent species to its present form is a kind of empathy. The word “empathy” sounds misplaced when applied to a relationship between a person and a plant but it feels like the right word. The more I learn about the natural history and ecology of each plant the more connected I feel toward it. I have shelves of books on the natural history of plants as well as their fascinating habits and structures. Take the bark of a tree, for example. Trees grow from a layer just under the bark so they outgrow their bark every season and have to crack or shed it. Birches solve this problem by peeling off the bark the way a snake sheds its skin; Sycamores and Jeffrey Pines shed their bark in jigsaw-like pieces; and Oaks develop cracks that deepen and widen as the tree ages. When I am painting trees I pay attention to these differences to help the viewer appreciate the particular tree as if it were a character in a novel.
I learned quite by accident that this kind of empathy with natural things is close to what the First Nations People call understanding their “spirit”. I learned this as the guest at a wedding where I happened to be seated next to a Micmac Shaman. The Micmacs are a first Nations People originally from the Canadian Maritimes. When he found out that I painted trees we got into a lively conversation about the native flora. He fascinated me with stories from the mythos of his people. I told him that I enjoyed his beautiful stories, but honesty obligated me to say “I appreciate that your people have had a connection to the trees of this land many thousand times longer than my people have had, but with respect, the tree that I want to paint was here long before even your people arrived”. After I said this I was concerned that he might consider my statement insulting, but he looked at me with an expression of delight and recognition. He said, “That is exactly the idea of the spirit of the tree that we Micmac understand!”
Being in the presence of something wild can be an awesome experience. Most of us experience this awe when in the presence of large wild animals or dramatic flora like a giant sequoia or red maple in blazing fall color. I like painting such dramatic images, but I take a special pleasure in revealing the majesty of flora that may not be so dramatic, capturing the unremarkable at its moment of glory.