This series explores trees with a series of shapes in their branches.
What if they only had one repeating shape in their branches like squares, the number 4 or triangles or ovals. I was influenced by Piet Mondrian’s series of tree drawings that were incredibly stylized. This led me to look at other artists and their way with trees. Gaudi in iron work, and Tom Thompson and his gnarly trees in Algonquin Park. The Group of sSven filled many canvases with North Ontario trees and they revered the spaces between the branches so much that they came first and the sky last… like stained glass, bringing the background into the foreground.
The trees took on a life of their own when I played with stencils filling in the spaces that the tree branches made by rolling ink into the negative spaces with a stencil. The peacock tree was born.
No two trees are ever exactly a like, this series has over 200 prints all slightly different from each other. I dressed some in ribbon and sequins. Some have other stamps interlaced or caught in the branches.
November 2011