Untitled Document

I began a series of paintings of light emerging through tree branches when my wife, Nora, and I went on a camping trip to Northern Arizona in the year Arizona was "ablaze" with wildfires. After the 2002 Rodeo-Chedeski fire started, we were surrounded by fires and evacuated from two campsites as fires changed course. Before evacuations, the campsite I found most inspiring was Woods Canyon Lake where in the stillness of tall pines, the air was occasionally broken by the raucous calls and flight of hugh black ravens as they passed like lines of music through the trees.

As I began painting, I wanted to reflect the explosion of light through the trees as if the light had substsnce; as if it danced and weaved its way through the branches like the ravens. To affect this quality, I left behind the more traditional methods of landscape painting in which the artist first washes in distrance, overlays with a middle ground and then proceeds to the foreground to create a sense of depth. I wanted the distant light to also reach through the trees up to the foreground, right to the surface of the canvas and the viewer's eyes. To do this I first painted the tree trunks, foreground leaves, and branches. Then between the twigs and leaves I began to paint mid-ground trees and finally I painted the distant light emerging between every branch and leave. I painted thick in chunks light which over-lapped the tree trunks as if bursting through, shouldering its way past the hard stark lines, bulling aside leaves and branches. The effect was that the normally crisp edge of a tree was not only distorted by the force of the light passing around it but also the splashes of light tended to pick up touches of the dark leaf colours or tree branches where the paint was still wet. This added to the feeling that the light had substance and as it passed through, it could not help but scuff off pieces of leaf and bark; its interaction now more noticeable than ever before.

It is very difficult to paint this way; it is similar to a vigorous expressive pointillism. The light has to "fill in" between the twigs instead of being overlaid by them and the chaos of branches overhead in a young forest is difficult to balance. Hard, sharp diagonal lines slash like knife cuts across the light and few trees are ever truely vertical. Long thin, young trees die in the race for light and their stark and jagged angles disrupt the composition resulting in a chaotic firework display of powerful lines and explosions of colour.l

I increased the intensity of this landscape by emphasizing the colours in the tree trunks. There is absolutely no black paint in my painting. All the darkness of the tree trunks is from pure pigment straight from the tube. Ultramarine, Dioxin Purple and even Alizarin Crimson when juxtaposed against bursting light will appear to be black yet will retain the power of the colour. Even the silhouetted shapes of birds do not use black in theirs forms and the grayish light sometimes found in the sky is actually a blend of colours instead of simply black and white.

A balance of light and the careful distribution of the chaotic lines hold the composition of my painting together. I achieve this balance, in the same way that the abstract expressionist, Jackson Pollock, seemingly splashed colours randomly and dripped paint energetically yet somehow maintained a pleasing balance by an even distribution of violent forces. It is a similar type of balance in my series of Light in the Trees where the final effect of my treescapes is a peaceful and orderly composition of seemingly random forces. It works, yet at any stage prior to the last splashes of light, it appears distorted and violent and consequently up untill the final brush stroke it feels that one has been steering a rudderless ship in a wild storm.

And all this was before the three fires changed my life. The first two fires were forest fires and occurred after the the first few paintings. It is only in retrospect that I see in photographs the quality of light of those first paintings of trees. They had an eerie waiting light, were less powerful, with tendrils of distant pines weaving through high branches, and an early morning light that was cool and expectant. As it happens, these paintings were set in areas from which we were evacuated and which were later overrun by fire; so it seeems that the trees had a foreboding sense and were sniffing the air and withdrawing into themselves. It appeared that the life giving air would soon irrevocably turn on them, leaving only fear and desperate hope for the future.

Too many of my "Light Through the Trees" paintings and almost all record of the paintings were destroyed in a building fire, which consumed my gallery and over 800 works of my art and life. I cannot convey my feelings on this irresponsible tragedy and I can only cling to a hope that is inherent in all devastating forest fires and that is the hope of the Sequoia, the largest most eternal of the Redwoods that can only propagate and can only begin new life, after a forest fire. The Sequoia seeds lie dormant in the soil until released by the intensity of the heat.

The seeds of my new work were planted in the form of a painting, which had been sold on lay-a-way and hung innocently on the gallery wall before the destruction. It was the largest painting of the "Light Through the Trees" series. After it was burned I felt obliged to either return the partial payment or repaint the artwork. With my first thoughts of trying to repaint, I felt it would be nearly impossible to recreate it from memory, yet I felt that by trying to recreate it, the process could possibly help my feelings of loss and despair. I was right in both cases. It was impossible to recreate the painting and it did help me to begin painting again. Nothing remains the same, yet it is in change that life resides. It is amidst the changes brought on by the gallery fire that the first growth, which is now emerging in my life and my paintings is revealing itself to be essentially the same, yet vastly different. The music of lines and colour has evolved from light musical airs to become dense fugues of interacting overlaying forces. Stronger colours, furious application, even greater chaos requiring even greater concentrated, control. I now hope to explore and observe this evolution of my life and art through a continuous line of "Light Through the Trees" paintings, which will respond to every daylight hour and even extend to different seasons ansd years. I am interested to see what evolves in my life and my art going forward. Painted with emotional realism, these large treescapes invite viewers to explore the primal depths of the forest and celebrate the perpetual renewal found in our lives.

A curious phenomenon has emerged from my most recent treescapes. It became most evident to me as I was sitting in my studio looking at one of my largest paintings. The light in the studio was early evening and I found my mind wandering into the forest as it prepared for the night. Nora came into the studio and switched on the daylight lamps alongside the easel. Immediately, the painting was transported into mid-day where different trees took on prominence, their brighter green leaves reaching for the sun. An hour or so later, as we were preparing to depart, I began switching off the studio lights and the light in the forest instantly took on an ethereal glow of moonlight. I have never known a painting to change so much as a progressed, as if each tree waited for its time. Frank Balaam 2006

Frank Balaam was born in England and attended Blackpool and Edinburgh Colleges of Art. He has lived in the southwest painting portraits and landscapes since 1985.