Journal entry April 18, 2007, Mary Anderson Center for the Arts

I spent all day making a painting of a small Fra Angelico tree with a slender trunk to which I added a wide exposed root system fanning out beneath it. This was an intense and focused experience. I entitled the painting Self-Portrait as a Young Tree.

After dinner, I set out for an evening stroll, following a trail deep into the woods. Suddenly I came upon a real tree, small, with a slender trunk and a wide, exposed root system fanning out beneath it, just like the tree I had painted earlier that day! Seeing that real tree in the woods was an astonishing experience. In fact, along a creek bed that was nearly empty of water there was, deep in the woods at Mount Saint Francis, a whole long row of trees with exposed roots. Finding those trees seemed to be an affirmation of the work that had come out of my psyche. This, I said to myself, is why I am here in this place.

So I continued to paint Tree Self-Portraits—twelve altogether—in order to explore my inner landscape—a full range of expression from darkness to light. Trees are a cross-cultural and timeless motif. They are symbols of life, fertility, death, regeneration, and the elements—Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Roots are symbolic of the underworld and the unconscious. In my tree self-portraits, the exposed roots are symbolic of exploring and revealing my inner world.

I painted two of the trees in full color (in addition to the versions in white on black), and I intend to paint the rest of the series in full color. The last tree in the series, Self-Portrait as a Radiant Tree, was conceived and painted about a year later than the first twelve in the series. The medium is metallic gouache.

REBECCA DVORIN STRONG

REBECCA DVORIN STRONG