From my Notebooks: ON TREES

Trees are infinitely varied in their texture, species, proportions, and moods.  There are different schools of thought when it comes to handling trees in the landscape.  Modern painters sometimes have a tendency to paint trees that are flimsy in comparison to their predecessors.  In their search for the dappling light and shimmer of life in the leaves they forget to appreciate the massive solidity of the oak tree in contrast to the wispy transience of the river birch or the willow.   There is a careful line to walk in painting trees.  They must have all of their gigantic, silent, full grown glory and yet all the pulsing life of cyclical growth that they see day in and day out season after season bare against the wind and elements.   It is not such an easy thing to capture; trees are soft and pliable out at the tips where they flutter and flip their leaves in the wind, and yet hard and rough in their boughs and trunk. There are many different things to say about one tree, let alone a hillside of them.  Painting here in Western North Carolina, trees are very often the chief subject.  Even if you set up to paint the mountain you must deal somehow with the tree masses that live on them and that likely crowd your easel.  When I went to the Highlands of Scotland to paint, I was visually shocked by the absence of trees on the jagged crags and hillocks. Having grown so accustomed to their presence here I was at a loss with out them. What a sign of how the English so used up the country! And isn't it interesting that people from the lowlands of the Carolinas and surrounding states flock to the Mountains for the peace and quiet of living on these forested hills.

Thank God for all of Nature, and today especially for trees!  Thanks for reading and sharing these ideas with anyone you like.  If this inspires any new ideas on Nature and Trees in your mind please let me know what you are thinking.