Tree twenty-eight.

A week off….kind of.  I need to find a way to balance my time.  I started back coaching this week, and I am excited to have my own team to coach this year.  I have been crafting it up, making all kinds of fun cheer stuff but the trees remained unresolved.  I need to go ahead and find a way to manage my time now, before the school year starts and I have even more obligations pulling me away from my art.  But I did do some creative things, and I worked on my Etsy site, so all is not lost. Per usual, I digress.  Back to the latest trees….Tonight, I saw my large sketchbook with those three remaining pages and I knew- time to get back on it.  So I started tree number twenty-eight.  Rather that reference a previous tree, I tried to start fresh and just sit down and draw…surely by tree twenty-eight I should be able to do this.  So I did.  I did just few pre-drawing lines and then…just went with it.   I seemed to focus on the text for this tree.  My focus?  The word love.  Over and over again, the word love.  I think I am drawn to this particular word for numerous reasons, and the fact that Love is my maiden name is actually not one of them.  When I was little, my mom had a picture of a tree and it had the word love over and over again hidden in the branches.  I remember looking at it as a child and trying to find every single one. I think I became aesthetically aware because of this tree painting.  Looking back on it, I know it was probably some very seventies-looking piece, with lots of brown and orange and a dark wood frame, but that picture fascinated me.  Now, there are other connections to the word LOVE, but this particular image is clear to me right now. 

Anyways, still figuring things out.  One my friends from college commented that she had been following the trees…what were they about?  The word that came to mind is vehicle.  These trees are a vehicle to get me working.  These trees are a vehicle to hold trees, figurative work, curvilinear line, patterns…the trees are a vehicle to move me from inactivity as an artist and a creative soul to a person of action, making art and not just talking about it.  So…may I present…tree number twenty-eight.

(Left) Tree twenty-eight.  (Right) Close up.