Salute to Trees

My preferred time of year to observe trees is in the winter. This time of year when the leaves are full I miss that. Oh I love the shade summer trees provide and the beautiful colors of fall but there is something starkly majestic about a tree with all its limbs exposed and spread against the sky. I think it must have something to do with the feeling of quietude and patient anticipation of the coming spring. Trees are among my favorite subjects to paint, I have a few old friends I watch through the seasons around the neighborhood.

My home is in an area that urban sprawl is gobbling up and it's saddening when beautiful mature trees are taken out for strip malls and new housing development. Often times the new neighborhoods take on the very names of the trees that were felled... wonder what the trees think about that? I've recently lost a few old familiars for the sake of widening a road and so they are gone, silently, with no outcry or gesture of disapproval on the part of the tree of course. The subdivision I live in was once part of a large farm almost 30 years ago so our trees are fairly mature here, but I realize at one time this too was a "new" development and I, with my home and car and consumption of well-everything- have contributed to the loss of those trees.

I'll share a couple of favorite quotes on the subject and two recent paintings of trees.

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.
Saint Bernard

I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.

Dr. Suess