Oaks

Paintings of a single tree made over three years in a field near West Bergholt, Essex, near where John Constable worked.

"Seeing—in the truest sense—is the lesson here, one that's taught with such elegance that you'll be bewitched into stopping and contemplating the birch or maple in your own yard..." from Oprah Winfrey's Book of The Week review of 'Oak: one tree, three years, fifty paintings'.

copyright sharp photo

vertigo, Shoreditch, London

oak, wood pigeon and oil seed rape

blue tit foraging on a pollard branch

flock of pigeons

oak at night

swallows at 11am

swallows at 9pm

semi-permeable membrane

In his book Nature Cure Richard Mabey says "...I believe that language and imagination, far from alienating us from nature, are our most powerful and natural tools for re-engaging with it... Culture isn't the opposite or contrary of nature. It's the interface between us and the non-human world, our species' semi-permeable membrane."*

I think the same is true of painting.