Barry Farmer
Tree Meditation: Rene Magritte made the painting of a smoker's pipe and lettered across the bottom, "This Is Not A Pipe." What is reality and what is an abstraction of the idea of that reality isn't real. The pipe is not a pipe since it has no real mass and is not separate from the flat surface upon which it is painted.
The trees I draw are not real trees. Sometimes I may put them in a landscape setting and in that sense they are a more conventional reminder of real trees. Other times I may use them as a starting point to proceed into abstract arrangements of shape and line. On a different level, the tree is a symbol of life. Life is a subject with infinite variations of what we see and what we don't see. Religion, science, and philosophy all are a part of that story. When a tree or a tree branch takes you to a meditation about life, my little offering has done its job.
