CHARACTER
One of my goals in painting trees is to capture the “character”of the tree, but, until recently, I had not thought deeply about what I mean by that. Then, a visit to friends near Rochester, N.Y. triggered some research and thinking that led me to a much clearer idea of what I mean by “character”.
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My Rochester friends invited me to a local park, because they knew I would enjoy the variety of trees. I sure did. I found myself moving from tree to tree excitedly describing each tree by mimicking their unique structures with my arms.
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I pointed to a giant sycamore (see photo above) and held my arms out in rigid right angles, like goal posts, to model how its branches grow straight out, in defiance of gravity. I pointed out how strong and solid it looked, almost like one of those concrete trees reinforced with rebar that you might see in Disneyland.
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I expressed the “character” of a dogwood tree by holding my arms one above the other to mimic the layering effect of its branches.
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While we were standing in front of a Norway spruce, I swooped my hands up, in a half circle like a ski jump, to mimic the pattern of the Norway spruce.
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Finally, my friend said, “you know, you’re a character. Fortunately, my husband and I like characters”. We all had a good laugh. I was relieved that, as weird as I may have sounded, she seemed to enjoy my antics.
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When I returned home, I checked the Internet to see if anyone else had written about the character of trees as I have, or whether that was just my eccentricity. I found a website that featured “trees with character” from the International Wood Collectors Society.
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These trees really were weird. Check out the photo of a coco palm tree from their website. That was clearly not what I mean by “character”.
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I checked out a few dictionaries. The typical definition of the word “Character,” is not judgmental: “Character is the collection of distinguishing features that form the nature of some person or thing.” But if you describe someone as a “character,” you can mean anything from “you’re weird” to “you’re interesting.”
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The Wood Collectors Society helped me see that my meaning of “character” was clearly about interesting features, not extreme weirdness. Also, it became clearer to me that I saw “character” as a property of a tree species, rather than of an individual specimen. The characteristics that interest me are those that have been hammered out during thousands of years of evolution and that enable a species to compete with others and overcome environmental challenges.
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Even more specifically, what I mean by a tree’s character is the general structure and shape of the species. I realize that a species of tree also has many smaller “distinguishing features” like the shape of the leaves, flowers or fruit. But these features are not readily visible when looking at trees from a distance. Using the word “character” to describe these features is like describing people as having a particular character based on the shape of their ear lobes.
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So, what are these structural characteristics that define “character” for me? Here are some examples, from the archive of my paintings, of what I call the structural characteristics of trees.
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Does the tree commonly have several trunks as in this painting of a Silver Maple?
Or does it have a single trunk as in this painting of an old sugar maple tree?
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Are the trunks twisted as in this painting of tabor oaks?
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Or straight as in this painting of ponderosa pine trees?
Do the ends of the branches turn up as they do as in this painting of a tamarack bog?
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Or do they weep as this photograph of a Canadian hemlock? (I have painted hemlocks before but not one close-up enough to show the weeping branches).
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Is the bark rough with deep cracks as in this painting of red pine trees?
Or do they have smooth bark as in this painting of aspen, beech and birch trees?
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…and so on.
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Taken together, features like these provide an holistic view that captures the general character of the tree, a concept that psychologists call the “gestalt”. This “character” of each type of tree is what I try to capture in my paintings.
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