When I Am Among the Trees | personal work
"I would almost say that they save me, and daily. " Mary Oliver, gouache on Arches
On a Saturday morning in October, we were awakened by sirens into a new reality. Fear and profound sadness washed over me—sadness for the loss, for the pain inflicted by human stupidity. Despair, a sentiment foreign to me, became an unwelcome companion for my days.
Then, fall arrived. My daughter, thousands of miles away in Japan, sent me photos of its spectacular beauty—vivid performances of impermanence mixed with aching longing. Into my dark days, those images brought a burst of light and color, life is a dance of contradictions.
The falling leaves felt like a marvelous requiem for a life that had ended and, at the same time, a quiet hymn to renewal—a promise of new beginning. I was compelled to paint them, over and over. In a chaotic world, nature was the only thing that made sense. As Mary Oliver so beautifully wrote, it was as though the trees “save me, and daily.”
This series of works was born from that need— to find solace in the enduring wisdom of nature.