Protected Trees


The Three Graces~Protected Orange Trees


Display in the exhibition:

Rebecca Dvorin Strong, Paintings

February 2 - February 28, 2024

Elisabeth C. Miller Library

University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture

Seattle, Washington

I came upon a group of potted orange trees in a courtyard in Florence, Italy. It was winter, and they were wrapped in white cloth to protect them from cold. Leaves and oranges were visible through the translucent cloth. 

The Three Graces-Protected Orange Tree I

2019-2024

Ink, watercolor, and gouache on Twinrocker handmade paper

14.5 x 11 inches

Photo: Spike Mafford, Zocalo Studio

$1,500.00

The Three Graces-Protected Orange Tree II

2019-2024

Ink, watercolor, and gouache on Twinrocker handmade paper

14.5 x 11 inches

Photo: Spike Mafford, Zocalo Studio

$1,500.00

The Three Graces-Protected Orange Tree III

2019-2024

Ink, watercolor, and gouache on Twinrocker handmade paper

14.5 x 11 inches

Photo: Spike Mafford, Zocalo Studio

$1,500.00

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.



Self-Portrait as a Waiting Tree

2008

Gouache

NFS

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. 


Sandro Botticelli

La Primavera

c. 1481-1482

Tempera and oil on wood

The Uffizi Gallery

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.


The Three Graces~Protected Orange Tree I

Detail of finished painting

In figuring out how to paint oranges and leaves covered with translucent white cloth, I first tried gouache on black paper (the same medium I had used for Waiting Tree), but those materials did not suit these images. 

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.