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                           Trees are amazing!

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I've learnt to appreciate them more as I've moved away from my country roots...

 

I grew up on the edge of the New Forest and inhabited a world where I took trees for granted. Trees were an important part of childhood. Walks in the forest, climbing trees and just being around trees were part of everyday life. My dad built my sister and I a fantastic tree-house in our 'big tree' where we spent many hours up among the branches. The tree fell down on the night of the 1987 storm - barely missing our house. The fallen branches obscured the view from my sister's window (and she slept through it!) It then took on a new life as we clambered over it - now climbing it horizontally, while my Dad cut it up for firewood.

 

My first artistic attempts to interpret trees were in clay. My art teacher complained that my GCSE ceramics work was all trees and 'cabbages'.

 

Now I love to paint trees in all media. There are so many shades of brown! My 'lumpy' paintings incorporate both natural and man-made objects - from beads, to shells, stones and rubbish. These take me back to my early love of texture in ceramics.

 

All trees are majestic, no matter how bent and deformed, windswept, coppiced or pollarded. Cut them back and they will reshoot. Put a wall or fence in the way and they'll push it out of the way or grow round or through it. Even when dead they live on: the beautiful twists and lines of the wood grain show the story of the tree's life.

 

Trees make our lives better.

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