On Painting Trees: A Season of Study

This autumn I found myself returning again and again to the trees outside the studio window. Each session a different light, a different mood. The blue tree series began as an exercise in limiting my palette — ultramarine, white, a touch of umber — and became something I could not stop.

There is something about trees that resists translation into paint. The way branches distribute weight. The way light falls differently on the upper and lower surfaces of a leaf. I have been working on four canvases simultaneously, each one a different interpretation of the same subject.

Painting in Sweden has given me a particular relationship to trees. The Swedish forest is not decorative. It is thick, functional, older than most of what surrounds it. The light here — especially in autumn, when the sun stays low even at midday — is unlike anything I knew in Poland. It is lateral light, coming from the side rather than above, and it makes the trunks glow.

The blue tree series is ongoing. I will keep returning to this subject until I understand it better, which is to say: for the foreseeable future.