A Love Note to A Winter Tree
I am a tree person. I connect with trees on so many levels--spiritual, natural, physical, emotional, personal, metaphorical and aesthetic. Since we are deep in winter, I thought I’d share my love of winter trees. I am sure I will branch out (pun intended) to other tree-related posts in the spring.
Beautiful In-betweens
Stark and barren of foliage, winter trees reveal their majestic structural beauty. One of the reasons I love winter trees is that there is such organic bold beauty and interplay between the tree branches and their in-between shapes. For me, winter trees are one of nature’s grand design triumphs.
As many of you know by now, I love shapes between other shapes, like the shape made between two branches. The artsy term is “negative shape” which I think is really bad branding. I have coined my own term (why not!) for these beautiful and essential forms in art and in life. I call them “In-betweens.” Maybe it will catch on.
This is Tree in Snow, 1973, oil on canvas, from the series. I’ve included a detail to share my father’s love of this patterning of branches and in-between shapes.
My Father’s Tree
As a child, on snow days when school was closed, I often accompanied my father to his studio across from the National Portrait Gallery (as it was called then). I remember watching him paint these grand tree paintings. He had a favorite tree in Montrose Park, in Washington, DC which we visited most weekends. He created a series of paintings about that one tree in all seasons including winter. (My dad was artist Frank Wright (not to be confused with architect Frank Lloyd Wright).)
Drawing trees, a childhood art lesson
Childhood me wanted to draw trees too! So at age 8, my father taught me the Y/V method of drawing trees. l was captivated. It’s just mesmerizing to repeat smaller and smaller Y and V shapes, creating this natural pattern to the top of the paper.
The meditative practice of drawing winter trees
I drew these Y/V trees constantly. I didn’t realize that I was partly attracted to drawing trees because it was a meditative practice that calmed me from an otherwise quite anxious state.
The Magical Branching Tree of Synchronicity
I’ve been reading Living in Flow, The Science of Synchronicity and How Your Choices Shape Your World by Sky Nelson-Isaacs, a physicist, researcher, and educator. It’s a very readable book with some great ideas about intentionality and synchronicity as well as flow.
As I’m thinking about winter trees and their Y/V patterns, Sky Nelson-Isaacs pops into my world describing how our intentions and actions can be visualized as a the Y and V branching of a tree. Every day we have many possible paths (branches) from which we select a few. We are literally and figuratively realizing our intentions (or not) by making choices along the branching tree of possibilities.
Synchronicity and our responsive universe
So how do we choose our branches? Our path? And how does synchronicity play a role.
Nelson-Isaacs posits that “We live in a cosmos that responds to our actions by bringing us more of the same. To oversimplify for a moment, if we act friendly to the world, we find that circumstances emerge that reinforce our belief that the world is friendly. Similarly, if we act hostile to the world, we find our perspective justified because events arise that confirm our preconceived notions. When we align with circumstances, circumstances align with us.”
In other words, “the universe… is responsive” with little synchronicities like my Y/V tree connection with Nelson-Isaacs’ book happening all the time. It is up to us to be awake and living in mindfulness to pick up on bite-size synchronicities which form a path towards our intentions. Mind blown.
Hug a Tree for Me
I look forward to future posts exploring Art + Well connections from tree hugging, to tree bathing to cosmic tree healing qigong. Please email me to share articles or aspects of trees that you find compelling.
I couldn’t resist adding this pithy “Advice from a Tree,” by Ilan Shamir who has a great website, YourTrueNature.com with advice from the natural world including the butterfly, lake, and the night sky.