Original painting. Soft and hard pastels,on a light grey PastelMat ground.
I have painted this tree — this species — so many times, I’ve lost count. I have painted and drawn many trees, from pitch pine to chestnut oak to tuliptree, but the Bucida buceras is the one I love most. It has tiny elongated leaves, in clusters of five or so — it is wonderfully delicate. And yet its ‘habit’, its pattern of boughs and general swag of motion — gives it a fabulous drama. It looks like a tree heaven-sent for art nouveau. I love it. And this painting shows a close pair, seen in my neighbourhood: delicate, elegant trunks and branches, reaching up to support frothy yet substantial sun-kissed foliage, dotted with minute green-gold flowers. Bucida buceras is a tropical tree from the Caribbean that grows quite well in southwestern Florida.
Anyway, when I first did the picture, I I didn’t want fussiness, so I declined initially to give a background to the trunks, or any further detail than an oasis of single-green ‘grass’. I wanted the trees to gather one’s gaze and go no farther. But I missed a feeling of warmth in the picture — in my mind’s eye, I saw a delicate sunrise. So eventually that’s what I painted: see below. This gives a better sense of balance, instead of the picture being top-heavy, as it was before. And it balances the cool blues and greens of the sky and foliage. I also added some dark purple to the shadows within the trees, and to the deeper greens — again, too add a complementary element. This was also added to the green below. My aim is to be naturalistic but not precisely realistic. The picture still has a slightly dreamy, out-of-this-world quality, and I like that.