PHOTOGRAPHS AND PAINTINGS

TREES ON WOOD

In search of expanded creative liberation, I focus on a singular subject matter, just trees. I begin with photography, which is a language I’m deeply fluent in and familiar with, and this first grasp is an introduction. That is the first moment of meeting between the camera and the living main character. Just as spontaneously, the visual grid narrows the focus again, and rhythms ripple across the visual plane, defined by the outlines of leaves and the gestures of the lower trunk and upper branches.

What was endless open sky is forced into borders and the frame supports the harmonization of shapes and physical planes in depth. The sculptural forms are easier to apprehend and delineate.

Beyond obvious benefits to our planet body system’s health, trees support us wherever we go. Their responsiveness to the wind that is activated by the water, their deep and hidden roots connected directly to the planet, their sheltering, encouraging, solemn care have been inspirational, mysterious, scary, confusing, healing, guiding, and loving. This relationship is what I aim to capture in my paintings on wood.

When the wind blows towards you and the branches are waving, I capture that experience in the photograph. Then I print an extremely high quality archival image as my ultimate subject matter and turn that into a finished painting. There is perfect sense in this nonlinear process.

I leave the most liberty at end stage where color is used in a sculptural planar manner to carve form and space into the illusion of depth. Figurative realism gently begets wonder.

—Nisi Ariana