The Face of Trees - Ms/Mx Frye-Mason

 During our seminar on trees we discussed how they hold memory within them and later in our seminars on Kondinsky M. Crombie asked where the soul of a painting lies. I’ve always been fascinated by trees as silent observers of the world and how one can place so much emotion into a single tree. One could assume the memory of the tree is stored within, and only visible in the brutal act of destruction to gain access to the rings. But the external continues to fascinate artists and is often personified. So does the memory, or the soul (as M. Crombie asked) reside only within, or hidden beneath the surface in its roots, or is there something about the outside that speaks to soul while the inside only shows history. 


I fell in love immediately with this tree outside my friends apartment because of the extent of its external personality. Blue beetles ran along its length, a fungus grew at its trunk (concealing many of the beetles from view), its bark peeled off in places like a nose, and all this only occurred at the base of the trunk. I never even looked up at its towering, two story tall branches filled with leaves, each one able to tell their own story. I continue to wonder where the soul resides when every piece of the tree can hold so much character, and what I might learn from this tree about the human form as well. We can consider the eyes the windows to the soul, or the throat the root of fear, but what about the knees? Do they not hold just as much personality, just as much emotion? Perhaps the artists fascination with the form of the tree can lead us to a fuller understanding of our bodies, how they reside in the world, how the world resides in them, and what stories they can tell us. 






Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshDecember 7, 2022 at 9:18 AM

    You are right: worlds within worlds! And that's only what we can see, on our scale, let alone hear, smell, taste.

    ReplyDelete

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