The Forest of Trees

Some of the books from Smith's Art Library, Not shown are the books at home which extend to include, Van Gogh, Thompson, Klimt, Edlefelt and Derain, and later additions to the pile of Signac, Maurice Prendergast

Today I am starting a fifth forest painting with the hope that it will become a fourth pattern and sculpture. As I tinkered with my most recent painting (#4 of the series), I found myself torn about the balance of light and dark, and overall complexity within the forest canopy. (This series is informed by a recent visit to Helsinki and surrounding World Heritage Sites. The forests of Finland were remarkable in their openness and density due to the narrow canopies and trunk density.) And I found such inspiration in Enckell and Edlefelt, that I thought a wider literature search might inform my next steps.

Boys on the Beach, by Magnus Enckell, viewed at the Amos Rex Museum, Source image https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Magnus_Enckell_-_Boys_on_the_Beach.jpg

Before beginning this final painting for July's show, I am beginning now with an end in mind. Curious if its future translation as a sculpture might inform its creation and structure in painting. It is one thing to paint in an open-ended way, bending and reorienting with each subsequent layer, it is another to see a final piece in the mind and its future multiple states. I hope this is not too heavy-handed of an approach, and that it doesn't become forced. This approach does parallel a bit akin to early days of design studios in architecture and landscape architecture. In both undergrad and graduate school the design process would begin with a concept that would be analyzed and abstracted into a unifying set of rules for making decisions and organizing functional components within the design as a whole. Painting can be this way also, but it can also be generated from a place of engagement with reflection and quiet and solitude of observation. If anything, design school, taught me to engage the intuitive part of my brain and creativity while keeping the analytical side active.

A portion of The Birch Grove Autumn, by Tom Thomson. Source Tom Thomson: The Silence and the Storm, by Harold Town and David Silcox, 1967

Learning from others, looking closely with intention, can help frame a question and an approach. I suspect that is what many of the impressionists did, spending their mornings in the Louvre, and then painting in the afternoons/ evenings. Though there are several museums within a day's drive, I wanted to narrow my search and I am pressed for time. First I thumbed through well-loved tomes of art books culled from exhibits I had seen in person. Next I broadened my search online- and felt that to be unproductive. Remembering that Smith College in Northampton, has an art library, I headed there two Fridays ago after work. It was my first time visiting the library. PSA, it is free and open to the public. If you haven't been, the Smith Art Library is a holy place-- Two whole floors dedicated to art books! I am sorry I could not read them all; The search opened up some additional references and introduced me to artists I previously knew less about. Below are more Impressionist and Post-Impressionist models of trees in western painting traditions. Each strategy was specific to a work within a suite of works, not necessarily a limiting characteristic of a particular artist's approach.

1) Tree as shape or blob, solid in massing, mostly impenetrable. With this approach the tree is a form on the distant horizon, midground loosely defined creating a figure or outline against the sky. This works well for those aerial perspectives with grand vistas where light can cross the hills. I felt moved by Cezanne's works in particular in this regard. How tree and massing create form in the wider landscape and in the midground areas the outer shapes of trees act as sculptural form.

I also appreciated Henrik Sørensen's painting from Telemark, How the brightest portion of the painting crosses diagonally in the center to lower third, and space is folded a bit with the muted foreground and bluer tones of the peaks in the distance. Nordic art in particular is on my radar after seeing works of Edlefet, Ecknell, and the contemporary Petri Ala-Maunus in person in 2023 and 2024.

"Kviteseid in Telemark" by Henrik Sørensen, 1910 (Norway)- Source, Scandanavian Modernism, Edam , Carl Thomas et al, 1989

3) Tree as singular element in the landscape. Here the tree is just a form of single structure. Clearly this is less interesting to me, since I didn't take any photos or notes of such images. Objectification of form without context is something I like less as a designer. But it is a strategy. Van Gogh and Monet had several works which embrace this technique.

4) Forest without canopy- here the vertical trunks are rendered, but the canopy is absent or slightly suggested above. This is probably the most powerful and common approach for rendering masses of trees. I was shocked at how many of my favorite works by others implemented this technique, from Klimt, to Derain, to Thomson, the trunks become dominant structural elements in the work. In some cases the trunks become flattened silhouettes, in a middle plane, while others they are animated with color and shadow, adding complexity to the over all structure. Perhaps it is my obsession with how trees and density of trees can shape our understanding of space within the landscape as we move through it.

The Turning Road, L'Estaque" André Derain in 1906.  Source: André Derain : 1904-1914, la décennie radicale : [exposition, Paris, Centre Pompidou, 4 octobre 2017-29 janvier 2018] - 2017

 A portion of White Birch Grove by Tom Thomson- Group of Seven Painter, Source Tom Thomson: The Silence and the Storm, by Harold Town and David Silcox, 1967

A portion of Avenue of Schloss Kammer Park, 1912 by Gustav Klimt, Source image https://www.gustav-klimt.com/Avenue-of-Schloss-Kammer-Park.jsp

5) Canopy as an element of sky. Here the strokes as sky merge into the suggestion of leaves the only difference being the colors selected, these can be dabs or dots, or swirls.

A portion of Trees in the Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital (also known as The Garden of the Asylum of Saint-Rémy) by Vincent van Gogh, painted in May 1889.  Snippet of image published by Van Gogh and Nature, Book by Chris Stolwijk, Richard Kendall, and Sjraar Heugten, 2015

A portion of the painting, Salem Willows (also known as The Promenade, Salem Harbor) painted in 1904 by the American Impressionist artist Maurice Prendergast.  Source Maurice Prendergast: Art & Design by Nancy Mowell Mathews, 1997

A portion of "Sainte-Anne (Saint-Tropez)" (1905) by the French Neo-Impressionist painter Paul Signac, Source Paul Signac , by Victoria Charles, 2013.

A portion of "Sous-Bois" (Undergrowth) created in 1905 by the French Fauvist painter Maurice de Vlaminck.  Source, Maurice de Vlaminck, by the Wildenstein Institute 2008

A portion of Tom Thomson's A Spring Decoration (also known as Spring), Winter 1915–1916. Source Tom Thomson: The Silence and the Storm, by Harold Town and David Silcox, 1967

6. Canopy of Layered shapes

A portion of Summer Shore by Tom Thomson. Source Tom Thomson: The Silence and the Storm, by Harold Town and David Silcox, 1967

A portion of Autumn Design created in 1922 by American Post-Impressionist artist Charles Reiffel. Source: Charles Reiffel: An American Post-Impressionist

All in all, a deeper dive was inspiring to say the least. It emboldened me to put painting number 3 aside and leave it as is in its loose state, and helped me clarify a technique and intention towards mark making for painting number five. Pulling together this blog post is a study guide for myself. A shortlist of references to return to again and again as I work through painting #5. New favorite finds are Prendergast, Signac, and Charles Reiffel. 

Another thread to explore in the future:

This image is a painting depicting a scene from the Gita Govinda, an Indian epic poem detailing the love story between the deities Radha and Krishna source:  Manaku of Guler: The Life and Work of Another Great Indian Painter From a Small Hill State By B. N. Goswamy

 The library also had a blend of art of different cultures. Something pretty special to stumble upon. I spent a couple of hours reading a bit about the use of trees as symbolic iconography in religious text. Here, panel after panel, the forest of trees were depicted as distinct symbolic separate entities, and often were wrapped in a flowering bush or other significant element to the story. A forest was depicted not as a blurred mass, but a collection of distinct individuals. Would love to learn more about trees as iconography and the role of trees in ancient Indian culture, but realized I had stepped into a side thread that was not my purpose of going to the library in the first place, so I put that book aside, to be picked up again and possibly checked out of the library for in-depth cover to cover reading