Immensity Taps at Your Life

​"Immensity Taps at Your Life" - acrylic on cradled wood panel, 12” x 24” x .75”.  Available for a limited time exclusively at Get the Gallery  Part of the collection "A View from the Gorge"


​It is foolish
to let a young redwood   
grow next to a house.

Even in this  
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books--

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.  
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

Tree, by Jane Hirschfield

Immensity Taps at Your Life

Vast roots hold trees of unbelievable size on cliff edges and along rock walls, defying the howling winds that whip through the gorge and push the branches forever in one direction or another.  Standing next to this immensity after hours of climbing higher and higher leaves me feeling small.  Sure, I climbed the  mountain.  But this “great calm being” has been holding on to the same mountain for a lifetime.

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About the art:  I return to scraping back into unprimed wood panel - this time on a much larger scale.  Allowing the movement of the paint to dictate the tree branches and the revealed wood panel to become the texture of the tree. This requires some fast, intuitive work as the surface paint must not be allowed to fully cure before scraping through to the wood.  I continue to focus on unexpected colors and in resisting the urge to perfect every branch, instead allowing the viewers eye to follow the suggested movement of the tree into the fluorescent canopy.