Artist Statement

STORMDAY



We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this stormday, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree wavings many of them not so much.
-John Muir

I began my own journey several years ago when I decided to become a photographer. Why photography? Because as Ansel Adams once said photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communication, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution. In much the same way John Muir wrote about nature, I pay homage to nature in my own way and through my own medium.

Why trees specifically? Among archetypal images, the tree is one of the most widely known symbols on Earth. There are few cultures in which the divinity or sacredness of a tree or trees does not figure: as an image of the cosmos, as a dwelling place of gods or spirits, as a medium of prophecy and knowledge, and as an agent of metamorphoses when the tree is transformed into human or divine form or when it bears a divine or human image as its fruit or flowers. The natural divinity of trees, their fruit, the shelter they afford from the sun or bitter winds, their green leafy mystery, the sense of protection and consolation they bestow, is felt universally around the world among all cultures, religions and peoples.

Lastly, Why stormdays? I like to photograph in "conditions"; mist, rain, snow, etc., where distracting backgrounds are eliminated or subdued. Sunshine and blue sky have never appealed to me. Too much light tends to reveal all the details of a scene and I am not interested in a perfect photocopy. I prefer suggestion over description. Perhaps it took a stormy day for John Muir to have an epiphany about our cosmic connection with trees. The world is pretty chaotic, seemingly speeding up and getting louder and more visually dense. I am interested in finding and/or creating calm shelters from the “storm,” places where quiet solitude is encouraged and inner contemplation is possible. I hope my work can do just that – encourage people to contemplate life and its sublime beauty. The kind of beauty that sometimes can only be found on a stormday. I do not worship trees, but perhaps in a way I worship through them. I look forward to the times in life when I can escape to a favorite tree and like Muir, look, listen and join the trees in their hymns and prayers.

Tree Study #8

Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.

-J. Willard Marriott

Tree Study #10

We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorous and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent and intimate hours.

-Marcel Proust, Pleasures and Regrets, 1896

Tree Study #4

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the ages can.

-William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned

Tree Study #7

The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tree Study #9

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

-Hermann Hesse, Wandering

Tree Study #1

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.

-William Blake, The Letters, 1799

Tree Study #3

God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, "AH!"

-Joseph Campbell

Tree Study #6

Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter; shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees.

- E.F. Schumacher

Tree Study #2

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

-Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

Tree Study #5

Because they are primeval, because they outlive us, because they are fixed, trees seem to emanate a sense of permanence. And though rooted in earth, they seem to touch the sky. For these reasons it is natural to feel we might learn wisdom from them, to haunt about them with the idea that if we could only read their silent riddle rightly we should learn some secret vital to our own lives; or even, more specifically, some secret vital to our real, our lasting and spiritual existence.

-Kim Taplin, Tongues in Trees, 1989