From painting the human figure to painting trees, I have always been interested in the abstract qualities of the subject - line, shape, color, and so on, while trying to give the subject a real presence. I continue this interest in my current series I call TREESCAPES. While these paintings are obviously based on tree branching, they are spontaneously created from memory, rather than from any actual trees, and I think of them as lines, colors, and shapes of certain qualities referring to Nature. They are as much about a specific light, weather condition, time of year, and my response to those effects and conditions, as they are about trees.

My wife and I live near Chapel Hill, NC in an area adjacent to Nature Conservancy land, surrounded by a towering canopy of trees. I am fascinated with the timeless aspect of that canopy, the seeming chaos of lines guided by a certain order, the natural thrust toward light while rooted firmly in the Earth, the morphic similarities with circulatory and nervous systems, lightning, the movement of water through the landscape, veining in rock, and the strength, the grace, and at the same time the fragile balance in Nature. All of this reminds me daily of the need to protect and preserve the natural world around us, which in essence is a matter of the preservation of ourselves as parts of the whole.

Richard Garrison, 2025