Works on Paper
With these talismanic trees the artist alchemizes and layers multiple semantic systems into a personal narrative addressing themes like love, hope, beauty, faith, fear, strength, the realms of the physical, and the world unseen. Here the trees take on the role of a central miracle working figure and the adornment and narrative layering of symbols transforms the painting into iconography. The use of gold leaf connotes the connection to the divine and hints at the transubstantiation of the work from mere paper, water and pigment into something mystical. Ornamented with a range of objects including eggs suspended from the tree branches to votives in the shape of local fauna, these are trees of life that connect the earth and the sky – grounding us while reaching for the divine.
