Tree Dialogue Series: Detail of tree drawing
Tree Dialogues Series: Fig tree in Ashfield Park during a residency at Thirning Villa, Ashfield, Sydney
Tree Dialogues Series: Drawings
As ecologists, your work often involves the precise recording of discrete moments, using statistics to predict and infer the dynamics of natural systems. However, this approach often overlooks the dimension and influence of memory. My intuitive process as an artist seeks to capture a more profound essence of nature, one that I hope resonates with your understanding of the natural world.
Initial Beginnings: Talking to the Trees
After 22 years living in a rainforest, I moved to a hilltop farm, surrounded by vast skies, endless views, and stunning sunrises and sunsets. However, the daily winds left me feeling exposed, vulnerable, and overwhelmed by the vastness and energy of the landscape. In response, I turned to my artistic practice to explore and understand these concerns, using the thesis of my life’s work: interaction as a sculptural strategy. This approach allowed the landscape to shape my work through my behavior and engagement with it.
I began by gardening and caring for two 75-year-old fig trees that stood like guardians at the entrance to my property. Under these trees, I found calm, safety, and reassurance in my decision to move. Their strong limbs provided shelter from the sun, protection from the rain, and a buffer against the winds. Feeling a deep connection to these trees, I sensed they had something to tell me. I attached weighted pens to their limbs and foliage, placing paper beneath them. Then, I waited and watched as the trees began to move, sometimes vigorously, other times in a slow, invisible rhythm. I captured these poetic movements on paper and film, each day revealing a new story, each tree sharing unique messages.
This series of drawings, scratchings, and short films is a poetic collection of renderings from these two 75-year-old trees during the month of May. It is a conversation with the trees, beginning with the simple question: “May I…?”
Tree Dialogues where it all started with 'The Fig' trees, Kureelpa, Sunshine Coast Hinterland.
Conceptual Process: Tree Dialogues
Have you ever walked through a forest, whether urban or bush, on a breezy or windy day and felt as though the trees were “talking” above your head? Your intuition might not be far off. Recent scientific discoveries suggest that plants have senses akin to ours and that they “talk” to each other—not just through their roots, but also through the air, much like we do.
We’ve long known that plants are sensitive to their environments, reacting to changes in temperature, soil conditions, and light. Their senses, like ours, are quite developed. In my work, I engage in conversations with significant trees in various gardens and public spaces—like the favorite trees in the Melbourne Urban Forest, Royal Botanic, and Abbotsford Convent Gardens—to explore whether these trees are speaking the same language and, if so, what they are saying.
As a landscape artist, I have a history of working with the land, using ‘living’ materials and making the environment both my resource and canvas for art-making. I am a keen gardener and see myself as a 3D painter who sculpts, but more importantly, as an artist who aims to give voice to our landscapes, specifically trees. My recent series, ‘Tree Dialogues,’ allows the trees to speak, highlighting their anthropomorphic qualities and positioning the ‘tree as monument.’
This process is simple yet profound: I attach a weighted pencil or pen to a tree’s limb (using a string-line or directly to the branches and foliage), place a drawing board and paper beneath, and over time, a visible, tangible conversation unfolds. These time-based conversations are captured—sometimes slow and poetic, other times quick and aggressive—depending on the prevailing natural elements. These dialogues can last all night, even several days, capturing for all to see the silent repertoire of kinetic movements as tree hieroglyphics.
I am curious to know whether trees of the same species share a singular or collective story and memory, how they use this communication as they age, and what they wish to express—especially those trees that are part of the Urban Forest and have been inscribed with love letters. How do they feel about these expressions of love carved into their trunks? Can we determine any response by examining the resulting drawings? What are these trees really saying? And what are these marks on the paper if not their form of communication, a botanical form of hieroglyphics? How do we decipher these markings? How do these marks differ from tree to tree, species to species, or site to site?
Investigating and comparing the movement of trees of similar and different species in various environments begs the question: Do they all talk the same or whisper differently? Can these conversations change how we view trees, our landscapes, and our environment? Have you ever wondered what they’d say to one another, especially when we begin to deforest the land, starting at one edge of the woods and working our way through to the other? Do the trees cut first shout to the others on the opposite end to run? Or are they whispering to us, asking that we be more mindful of the consequences?
Trees are archetypes of connectivity, and their lessons are infinitely vital. This series is about the agency of trees, their symbolism, our engagement with them, and our understanding of their legacy to our world. So, let’s explore together—do they talk the same or whisper differently?
Climbing Ross discussion in action
Sunrise, Kureelpa, what the Trees see everyday, no wonder they had lots to say!!!