My entire life I have had a love affair with trees. I have felt a pull to understanding them and have had this underlying feeling that there is so much more to their world than we are aware. My #art is much about that... my belief that things are connected in ways which we don't fully understand.
My images I create are worlds where things connect in what seem non-sensical ways. But maybe they are not so far fetched after all. They make sense to me on an intuitive level. I recently watched a TedTalk by Suzanne Simard. (Recently, as in this morning!) I am inspired again. I am motivated again. I feel invigorated. And even feel that her talks have helped me understand my own work better.
Her work in science discovered through facts links with my work in art based in emotion. I listen to her talks and see her passion and understand better what I intuitively understood on my own. Our similar idea communicated in 2 different ways - one scientific and one emotional.
I am having an "ah-ha!" moment. I am actually seeing my work with new understanding. I mean that literally... I am looking at some of my paintings hanging in front of me as I write. She speaks about how trees communicate with each other - mainly underground. They actually know and help their kin. There is an underground network of communication from tree to tree and it is not random. It is intentional.
One thing that also strikes me is how the older trees, the "mother trees" as she refers to them, actually take care of their young. As they die, they send "wisdom" to the younger saplings through the root system. She has been able to trace these signals from the parent tree to the sapling directly. As we cut down these mother trees and plant new ones, these forests are weaker because they do not have their mother to help them. These newly planted forests are also not balanced with differing species. The yin-yang is thrown off.
Translate that to people. Think of different species of trees as races. They help their own but need each other to survive. Each species contributes in it's own way. Their life cycles are actually all on a unique cycle, even though we see it as the same within seasons, when you look closer, each tree species develops in its own unique way. Contributing and taking carbon and other elements at differing times to keep things balanced.
Trees are amazing. Forests are intriguing. We can learn so much from them if we allow ourselves to open our minds.
If you aren't familiar with Suzanne Simard's work, here is a start.
This is a work of mine that I was looking at with fresh eyes as I wrote this:
"Bridge to Seeing", 2016, acrylic and maps on canvas
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