Inspiration

My Birch series continues to be an ever evolving theme and a continual source of joy for me each time I complete one of these.

The detail and marks in the birch trunks makes this series the most detailed of all. But when finished, and I’ve got it right the result is incredibly satisfying.

I continue to add and change subtle aspects like the grass tones in the foreground, and the way through the forest to the ever infinite and misty dream like horizon.

The painting seems to pull the viewer inward and into the distance behind the forest, and despite the bold and sharp focus of the foreground detail the eye is drawn toward the ambiguous, the unseen and distant,  and of course the mystery of nature itself.

Ten years ago on a train journey from Hamburg to Prague travelling through the Black Forest I first saw the stunning kinetic patterns as the forest whizzed by.

A very Zen like geometrical collision of the horizontal black bark markings intersecting with stark white vertical trunks,  etched in my mind forever.