Marcia Burtt Gallery: Arboreal Exhibition

Records of history and hope for the future of our planet, trees are also a source of inspiration for our Gallery artists.

Drawings of bare trees composed of delicate lines hang on our gallery wall next to works composed of washes, tendrils, and strips of paint that form full foliage canopies. When featured alone, a single tree becomes an intimate portrait. Gathered in forests, copses, and on ridge lines, trees form tableaux vivants that satisfy our desire to anthropomorphize.

Tree trunks are nature's vertical stripes: painters use them to break up a canvas or frame a scene. Fading into the distance, they pierce the sky. Their rhythm upholds the canopy creating an irregular horizon that moves to a distant vanishing point. Trees are an invitation to abstraction, allowing our artists to visualize alien forms in their scraggly limbs and leaf patterns.

For our Gallery landscape painters, whether realist or tending toward decoration or abstraction, trees supply creative oxygen.