Trees with attitude: Altitude and Solicitude

When you are walking through a wood, and you look up, it's then that you realise the sheer magnitude of trees. 

Towering high above our heads, far removed from petty human troubles, trees seem to emanate peace and to embody a quiet power and stability. They are solid, peaceful and generous presences in the world, providing shelter and sustenance to all manner of living things. It's no wonder, then, that the Celts identified silver birch with renewal and purification; that rowan, the "wizard's tree", traditionally protected against malign magic; and that the oak, whose strength and longevity is widely admired, has long been adopted as a positive symbol of England.

All of these trees are native to the British Isles. I encountered these particular examples on Greenham Common (in Berkshire, England): the silver birch and rowan depicted in Altitude bordered on heathland, growing straight and tall next to heather, holly and gorse; the oak and its silver birch companion in Solicitude were in a well-wooded area, and it seemed - from their shapes - as if they had had to dodge and twist beneath the canopy of other trees in order to reach the light.

_______________________

Altitude
Oil on canvas, 50 x 100cm

£300 SOLD


Solicitude
Oil on canvas, 50 x 100cm
£300

Please contact me if you are interested in buying a painting.