|
|
|
||||||||
Cherry Trees
April, 2002
December, 2002 The winter solstice - The trees in their full glory of fall foliage.
February/March 2003 Winter still holds sway here in San Francisco Golden Gate Park. The cherry trees are still sleeping but I went out to paint them in their naked beauty. There still isn't much light, as you can see from the deep shadows and dim sky. But the sun is returning and spring is on its way.
2004. I had cataract surgery in January and February. I had gone legally blind with triple vision. Curiously, my work had been getting to look a lot like Monet's paintings. He had cataracts and when they did surgery on him they shattered his lenses so that his last paintings were really just riots of color. I could understand how he painted that way because that was close to how I was seeing. When I would look at a tree, I would see three trunks. I knew there was only one and tried to make a mark on the paper that way, but then, I couldn't really see the paper either. As for branches and leaves, well, there were obviously three times as many and I could just take my pick as to where I wanted to place things. After the surgery I was ecstatic to be able to see the lavender range of color again. Cataracts turn everything yellow but I missed cherry blossom season because I was healing from the surgery.
March 2005 I went out to do cherry blossom paintings and found myself entirely overwhelmed by the beauty I was seeing. I could not even begin to pick up a piece of pastel. There was so much visual information coming in with my new eyes that all I could do was stand in awe. I did take photographs.
March 2006
I met an 80 year old artist
(Peter Louie) on one of the trails in Golden Gate Park and he showed me his pen
and ink drawings. Patience! That's what he has. It was really
helpful to meet him because the day before I had been out with paper and pencil
trying to sketch an area of a landscape that I have been working in encaustic in
the studio. I have a number of photographs of the area, but one section
was so dense with the foliage of so many trees that I decided to go on site with
a sketch book. I had a very difficult time trying to render, again,
because of a flood of so much visual information. Peter had solved the
problem by rendering foliage in the distance as simple outline shapes. The
middle ground had denser lines and the foreground was filled with
cross-hatching. I will try to landscape area again and see if that kind of
thought process helps. But, the point is, patience! Taking the time
to see and then make a mark and look again and just keep stepping through the
sketch. This is one of my two favorite sites (photos
below) I call the location "The Green Man" because every
time I work there This second photo is right around the left
curve in the road above. This year I got intrigued by naked branches
and the underlying structure of the "bones" of the tree.
I especially love the movement in the tree on the right. It's
a bit hard to see but there is some real dancing magic going on
it it. About mid-April this tree bursts into gigantic pink flowers
creating a wonderful arch. The Rhododendrons behind it are already
blooming. They are really early because the rhododendrons don't
usually bloom until after the cherry trees. These are new plantings.
That might have something to do with it. (The pictures come from
the Rhododendron Dell in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.) Just for fun, here are the two views as if
you were walking in the park.A walk through one of my favorite cherry blossom locations
images of faces appear in the tree foliage surrounding the cherry
trees. While working I am concentrating on getting the shadows
and highlight I don't see faces because I'm too busy focusing
on minute details. When I get the pieces home, I find the faces.
No blossoms yet on the cherry trees. These don't usually get going
until the first of April.
