The Witness Tree
Original artwork
 
When I first heard the term "witness tree," I fell in love with it: the idea that a tree, something rooted deep in the earth and reaching for the stars, is also an observer.
In this piece I've tried to capture two moments of witness.
The first is ours, the viewer's: an old, gnarled tree on a hilltop. Weathered. Patient. Present.
The second is the tree's own memory: a young tree in a forest, and the blurred recollection of a woman walking her dog through dappled morning light.
We assume we're the ones looking at the tree. The second image asks what the tree sees when it looks back at us.
 
From its vantage point, a human life is a brief, slightly indistinct event, set against something that might stand for two thousand years.
The woman and her dog aren't symbolic. They're mundane, transient. They simply passed through the life of something ancient, and that ordinariness is the point. This tree has stood through thousands of people doing thousands of utterly ordinary things.
That's what I'm exploring.

Details
Pen & ink on Arches 300gsm cold-pressed paper
45 × 32 inches
Ships unframed, ready for the frame of your choice
Please allow approximately 3 weeks for shipping