Painting Trees
It's ironic that I felt that I did not want to paint trees. "I'm bad at it." I protested.... "I prefer to painting people..."
But I haven't painted that many people...
...and it seems that most of my more successful and emotionally invested work depicts them... bare, full, but always tall... always reaching.
Maybe they are too much like a mirror for me. It's too frightening.
As I draw them, I feel like my mind is weaving through the branches. Like I am the growing branches...reaching higher and higher. In so many directions.
I think what scares me most in our similarity is that growth.
The tree is almost always growing upwards and out... sometimes even conflictingly. Sometimes, it looks like the branches are growing downwards...but at one point, there were upwards... and out... But over time, those branches weave into one other, point down and inward. And to the tree, it must feel so counter-productive. It has spent lifetimes trying to reach the heavens... and in the end it is tangled up in itself... and relatively, it hasn't even begun to reach its goal....
...but then the beauty of it all, is that from the ground, the opposite is true. The majesty of the tall outstretched branches, seems endless from the ground. Those branches, from the perspective of the very heart and bottom of the tree, envelope the sky.
Maybe I'm afraid that I am like a tree.
I'm afraid that with all my reaching outward... trying to grow and become something that can reach the heavens from this Earth... I will die feeling that I never got there. I will die tangled up in my own failed attempts to fly...
...and in that death, I will overlook everything beautiful about myself. I will neglect to realize how high I have come from the dirt where I began. I will envy the birds and scorn that I could not fly, but forget that it was my branches that nurtured them from birth. I will curse that I did not become what I dreamed, instead of seeing the wonder I brought into the world.
I am afraid, as I draw these bare limbs... that I am really drawing myself.
But then... that's silly. I think I knew, from a long time ago, that no matter what I have drawn... I have always been drawing myself...
And like the trees, there are so many facets.... my possibilities are endless, and so too is my art.
If I remember that, maybe some day I will take off... or, even if I never do, maybe I can come to appreciate that one thing I'm always forgetting... the beauty in myself.
But I haven't painted that many people...
...and it seems that most of my more successful and emotionally invested work depicts them... bare, full, but always tall... always reaching.
Maybe they are too much like a mirror for me. It's too frightening.
As I draw them, I feel like my mind is weaving through the branches. Like I am the growing branches...reaching higher and higher. In so many directions.
I think what scares me most in our similarity is that growth.
The tree is almost always growing upwards and out... sometimes even conflictingly. Sometimes, it looks like the branches are growing downwards...but at one point, there were upwards... and out... But over time, those branches weave into one other, point down and inward. And to the tree, it must feel so counter-productive. It has spent lifetimes trying to reach the heavens... and in the end it is tangled up in itself... and relatively, it hasn't even begun to reach its goal....
...but then the beauty of it all, is that from the ground, the opposite is true. The majesty of the tall outstretched branches, seems endless from the ground. Those branches, from the perspective of the very heart and bottom of the tree, envelope the sky.
Maybe I'm afraid that I am like a tree.
I'm afraid that with all my reaching outward... trying to grow and become something that can reach the heavens from this Earth... I will die feeling that I never got there. I will die tangled up in my own failed attempts to fly...
...and in that death, I will overlook everything beautiful about myself. I will neglect to realize how high I have come from the dirt where I began. I will envy the birds and scorn that I could not fly, but forget that it was my branches that nurtured them from birth. I will curse that I did not become what I dreamed, instead of seeing the wonder I brought into the world.
I am afraid, as I draw these bare limbs... that I am really drawing myself.
But then... that's silly. I think I knew, from a long time ago, that no matter what I have drawn... I have always been drawing myself...
And like the trees, there are so many facets.... my possibilities are endless, and so too is my art.
If I remember that, maybe some day I will take off... or, even if I never do, maybe I can come to appreciate that one thing I'm always forgetting... the beauty in myself.
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