Protected Trees

The wrapped orange trees instantly brought to mind a tree that I had painted from my imagination, Self-Portrait as a Waiting Tree. In that painting, a wrapped potted tree waits patiently until it is time to be planted and to grow freely.

The day I saw the potted orange trees, I had earlier visited the Uffizi Gallery, where I spent a long time gazing at Botticelli’s La Primavera. In the painting, six women and two men, as well as a cupid, are gathered in an orange grove. Three of the women, the Three Graces, dance together, wearing flowing white diaphanous garments. 

In my visual memory I linked the real wrapped orange trees I saw in a Florentine courtyard to Botticelli’s evocative painting of Three Graces dancing in an orange grove.

I made these paintings during the Covid pandemic and, as I worked on them, trees protected with cloth coverings became for me a metaphor for our collective experience of waiting (sheltering in place), covering (masking), and needing to feel safe in the world.

I needed to choose a type of paper that would suggest the atmosphere and the architectural surfaces of Italy. I finally settled upon a Twinrocker handmade paper with feathered deckle edges made from cotton rag and flax.

I experimented with various inks and paints on the handmade paper. The problem I needed to solve was how, with water-based media, to overlay diluted white paint on top of the already painted oranges and leaves without blurring or dissolving them.

To check for blurring and dissolving, I stroked fluid translucent whites on top of oranges and leaves, using different methods and combinations of materials. For the oranges, leaves, branches, trunks, and pots, I settled upon colored inks, watercolors, and gouache. For the translucent cloth, I used white gouache and ink. 

Here is one of the orange trees in progress, ready for me to paint the translucent white of the cloth covering:

And here is the completed painting.