Arboreal Catalogue Essay

“The Landscape painter must walk in the field with a humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see nature in all her beauty…The world is wide; no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world…”

- John Constable

To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience.

- Nan Shephard, ‘The Living Mountain’

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Arboreal began wholly unexpectedly during a workshop I was teaching one summer for the Harwood Museum at the D.H. Lawrence Ranch north of Taos. The workshop was based on Georgia O’Keeffe’s famous The Lawrence Tree painting, which she made at the ranch in 1929. At the start of the day I assured the attendees that we’d only be inspired by her approach to the subject, and that I wouldn’t paint a tree for the demo. And then, as often happens on-location, the place and weather adjusted my plans for me, and wouldn’t you know it, an hour later there I was painting a ponderosa. The piece – Trunk #1 (Thank you) – became the inspiration for this show.

If you’re unfamiliar with O’Keefe’s piece, it is memorably composed. We, the viewers, are positioned looking upward to the night sky – but it’s mostly obscured, and our eyes are directed along the trunk of a large ponderosa pine. It angles forcefully in from the top left of the piece down to the painting’s center. Between us and the starry night is the tree’s big, tall, burnt sienna and red trunk, and then its branches, unfurling outward, holding up the tree’s dark canopy. And finally, beyond that, the composition stretches into the vastness of space and time.

It’s a wonderful painting that leaves a mystical imprint. There is a palpable curiosity and sense of awe in the work; of beholding scale and an intimacy with wonder. It’s much like the feeling of lying under a big tree and contemplating life.

Paintings are powerful. They communicate to our bodies and minds; they can transcend time, culture, socio-economics, and language. One visit to the MoMA to see Van Gogh’s Starry Night changed my life. People are often spontaneously moved to tears by paintings. Good paintings reach some part of us in a manner that is almost magical, serving as thresholds between what we know already and what we didn’t yet realize about our world: as invitations to look more deeply into the realm of possibility and feel the awe of discovery.

A show such as Arboreal, then, is an endeavor of multiple natures. On one hand, it is clearly inspired by trees and about trees. And in this I’ve taken a literal approach to depicting them – at least when viewed at some distance. Every painting features a recognizable tree, or trees; the show is something of a survey, an effort to follow their diversity through our region. There are singular trunks as in Tree in the Trail, Standing still (Ghost Limbs), or Trunk #1 (Thank you). And there are undulating tapestries and flows of trees through the landscape in Fall Flows and Happy Little Trees #1 and #2. There’s seasonal foliage in In the Stand, and, shaded shelter under outstretched branches in Budding out by the river.

On the other hand, there are no trees in Arboreal. It is a show of paintings, not trees. Paintings about paint’s special capacity to contain every intimation of the correspondence with a subject. And how that special capacity can affect us deeply and open doors to seeing the subject, and ourselves, differently. Arboreal’s paintings contain images of actual places and trees, but the images are built out of felt senses that arose in the body while with trees. Tree in the Trail, for example, isn’t just a tree in a forest; it’s the result of discovering bursts of electric green exuberance in the canopy, forceful trajectories of trunks and branches jutting upward and outward, and stark contrasts of dark and light colliding on bark. And Fresh Light (Thank you Daniel) isn’t only junipers and piñons at sundown. It’s what standing in the community of trees at sunset felt like: an almost nonsensical experience of being hit in the eyes with technicolor sunset light while apparition-like tree silhouettes bobbed in and out of view – big, bold, nearly unresolvable, cacophonous, and still, deeply harmonious.

Each piece was made of these perceptual fluxes, by a ferrying between the inner world of felt sense and the outer world of specific phenomena and place. And these sensational experiences are in turn captured in the material of paint, directly and immediately amidst creative correspondence with the subject. As much as possible – more than ever in my work, in fact – I tried to let both domains live on in the finished paintings. The resulting marks and colors feel fresher, less manicured, and nearer to a visual space between chaos and coherence that I’ve wanted to explore for years. Painting trees changed me; somehow they gifted more affinity for immediacy, more appreciation for the here-now-gone-tomorrow of things, and more respect for the value of unexpected marks and colors.

And so as much as Arboreal is a show about the trees of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and vast valleys below, it also is a chronicle of what resulted from a creative act dedicated to the trees. It is a celebration of correspondence between human and tree, artist and landscape, and of the powerful changes that painting amidst trees brought.

My approach to painting is animated by a few beliefs: One is that by painting outdoors, amidst the landscapes I know – the places I live, the trees I see, the trails I walk – I will find something of the universal and be able to share it in the form of finished work. The belief is not that I will necessarily understand it (or even know that I’ve found it); only that the act of looking closely – deeply – at the landscape is powerful and opens up new perceptual possibility. Another belief is that painting is capable of transmitting profound sentiment. And a third is that innate to the creative act is a mystery: we can communicate things greater than our comprehension, and this is a potent part of powerful paintings.

The magic of painting isn’t only in what Van Gogh or Georgia O’Keeffe knew – but also very much in what they didn’t know about the work, their subjects, and the creative process. What made O’Keeffe’s The Lawrence Tree so beautiful is the sense of discovery alive within it: The sense of reverence for the tree, the canopy, and the starry night. And then the skill to convey with humble regard the vast, universal sensations that arose while in correspondence with the elder tree.

Painting requires loosening one’s habitual hold on preconception, certainty, predictability, and isolation. It is a relational act with – if truly alive and courting the moment freshly – an unknowable outcome. A painting does not improve with ideas of what is “mine,” or how important “I” am, or by who’s measure. It improves with the quality of attention one brings; with the depth of curiosity and commitment; and with, as 19th Century English landscape painter John Constable councils, as little ‘arrogance’ as possible. Nature is correspondence, communication, and ecologies of connection: “We,” more than “I.” It does not do to unjustly claim as one’s own genius that which is so deeply animated by all things.

And so it does not do, either, to isolate the creative process from its inspiration; painting within the landscape becomes a necessity. In my practice, painting in nature first developed by seeming chance, and then later became the intentional centerpoint. How better to “walk…with [Constable’s] humble mind” than to correspond with the landscape, and especially trees, by meeting them where they are? Outside, in weather and light and time. By the river. In the high alpine forests. It’s rarely comfortable, but it can be ecstatic. And it always requires meeting nature on its terms: working with realities of each day is a balanced surrender, of sorts, to one’s part in the greater play.

Making Tree in the Trail serves as a good window into the process and the challenges that can arise. The piece prominently features the trunk of an alpine conifer I had walked by for ten years without noticing, and then last fall saw for what felt like the first time. Its bark is gnarled with deep, dark crevices that stretch upward. In the morning, cool canyon shadows frame the tree’s base, which is set alight in the blaring sun. Dark/Light; chiaroscuro on a Taos trail.

But nothing about this painting comes easily. It requires hauling 60 pounds of gear to the edge of the wilderness in an old trekking pack, big panel in hand, umbrella and easel jutting out high above my head. And on first try, it’s clearly the wrong time of day. So then everything has to go back down the trail. After the frustration, I realize with relief just how difficult painting and carrying a huge wet panel would have been in the wind and tell myself not to do that. The next day it’s all the same again. Driving back, and hiking, and hauling. But lo, I’m painting in the wind. The 60” x 48” wood panel is bungee-corded to a tree and jostling the whole time. My umbrella is blowing over. My paint mixing table is blowing over. I’m underprepared. The sun keeps moving. The shade keeps leaving. I can’t see well; I’m tired and hot and altogether despondent, but holding onto the faith that something in the essential wisdom of the process will answer the call.

At its best, this type of discomfort during the process compels adaptation, inviting a flow state and a relinquishment of egotism – a healthy humbling. Every day – even at the same location – brings an entirely new topography of color, light, weather, and time, and importantly, a completely different inner landscape. And therefore presents fresh possibilities to set aside preconception and see better, feel more. If the act of painting is attuned to the landscape, even two identically situated and composed pieces must end up entirely new no matter how similar conditions superficially appear. What a lesson, a window, to the infinite diversity of our world. It echoes Constable’s observation that “the world is wide, no two days are alike,” and Scottish writer and poet Nan Shepherd’s, “To know fully even one field or land is a lifetime’s experience.”

Painting outdoors is often attributed to those who are gluttons for punishment, who enjoy suffering. To be clear: on a cold winter day, I like a cup of hot chocolate on a couch with a warm blanket as much as anyone. And painting in the wind is often objectively miserable. Yet it feels essential to this work that my preference to be comfortable should not outweigh the call to correspond directly with the landscape.

The resulting paintings are shaped by nature and hopefully carry forth some of the mysteries of a given place on a given day. The work in Arboreal was made with the trees and was shaped by the places and elements that they, too, were shaped by: sun, rain, heat, cold, wind, snow; topography, time. The creative act then can be a collaborative effort even as my body is the one applying the paint. I do my best to respond to an indeterminate call and then do justice to a place, or moment, or individual tree. The body is the vessel of feeling; skill with the medium is the facilitator; and, nature is the director. And together, work arises of that unique moment.

No two leaves on a tree have ever been the same; no work is ever more or less than the moment, the content and correspondence, that shapes it.

Jivan Lee / Taos, New Mexico / May 2024