Up the Mtn #203 This haiga reminds me of an old oil painting, one whose base layer of gesso is peeling or flaking.The former trunk, is now a stump in the Willamette National Forest, aside an old logging road. It has seen quite a bit of life, and death. Once it thrived which is evident in the width of it's trunk, yet it has been felled for the most part. Still even in death it speaks to me, and to all that take the time to look at it. Its bark is like organic gesso which is peeling away, slowly, yet surely, shedding it's outer layer. To me this shedding of bark is akin to an old oil painting with old pieces of dried out oil paint flaking away at the edges of textured brush strokes. Only it's not the oil paint but the underlying gesso that is drying out and shrinking until chunks begin to crack and fall or peel off the trunk, the tree's canvas.
It is this process that is so interesting and mesmerizing to me as I pass it. I past this flaking trunk stump on an almost daily basis, while climbing back up the old logging road from the McKenzie River. There was something still alive about this seemingly dead trunk stump. I saw and still do see some of my self in it. It, I, am symbolic of life's transitions. I'm older now not as spry as I once was, yet still I stand and move. The trunk stump, although dead on one level, is still a distinct visual part of nature. In essence the trunk stump acts as a mummified part of the forest. Although dead it is still and integral part of the forest, still intersectionally a part of a greater whole. A puzzle piece that is required to complete this forest, and it acts as a sort of symbolism for life's cycle, and the seasonal changes that can be so vivid here in this Pacific Northwest Forest.
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