Tree-lined Path
Treelined Path - 11” x 14” Oil and Alkyd on Stonehenge Paper 2025
When I start to feel creatively stagnant, I know that I need to get out and do more observational sketching. However, a funny thing happens when I actually start setting some of those observations to paper or canvas in the studio… All those “sketches” and “color studies” done in preparation for a new work are thrown out because it’s not so much the observed landscape (its representational accuracy, its color, its lighting) that matters, but the feeling I got whilst standing there observing and taking it in.
This piece looked very different when it started. It became almost too precious to live, and then I scraped it off, throwing the excess paint up on my wall where now grows a massive mural of mishap. The residual was but a ghost of its former self and from there I began to bare out the memory of the feeling.
I often take my kids to various “green spaces” that pepper my neighborhood. We play alongside the roots of trees that struggle out of manicured lawns and reside next to property barriers; wooden fences above which peek out the roofs of houses. Some of my fondest memories of my kids are from moments when they are out playing amongst trees.
The strictness with which I first approached this piece just didn’t fit that playfulness, so I had to let go of the expectation that this would represent anything other than what it wanted to be. I wasn’t sure about it when it was done, so I slept on it and when I saw it again it felt right to leave it as is.