Original artwork description:

I think if I was only able to have one tree, it would be a Japanese maple. These trees have a seemingly unending variety of colours and shapes and different moods for all seasons. With this one, sometimes the leaves are green, and the trunk red, and then later in the year, it’s vice versa!

I commenced painting this one of our little Japanese maple last spring. It started out as a fairly representative daubing, but as it progressed, I pushed it further and further into an abstraction, using the colours and space to replace a lot of the form.

Now then, according to Wikipedia, ‘Abstract art is art that uses the visual language of shape, form, colour and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world’, but according to Pablo Picasso, ‘There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards, you can remove all traces of reality’.

I can’t really argue with either point of view, sometimes, depending upon your point of view, a bit of abstraction just makes things a bit more interesting. A bit like looking at a net as either something to catch fish with, or some string holding some holes together!

Materials used:

oil paint

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