Oregon Birch Along Hwy 6

"Oregon Birch Along Hwy 6" represents one of the first of my popular tree trunk paintings. I should really start calling it a full-fledged Series as I've painted many birch -- and now aspens -- over the years.
I painted this particular stand of birch when I lived in Oregon and was inspired by the stands of coastal birch along a small highway that winds through the forests of Tillamook County: Highway 6. Now that I'm back in my native Colorado, I've adjusted my technique to paint aspen trunks rather than birch. But today, I still dream of winding through the birch on Highway 6...
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About my Birch and Aspen Trunks:
What is more perfect than a line? Or four lines made into a square (my most favorite shape)? My love of nature has shown me some of the best examples of linear components. Trees are a great example of both the vertical and linear aspects that I’m drawn to. And trees often inspire the vertical shapes in my abstracts and sometimes even appear as recognizable components - such as these tree trunks - in my more representational abstracts.

 Sometimes a horizon line appears in my more landscape-themed abstracts, but most of my paintings really have a vertical energy to them, like these tree trunks. To paint each trunk I perfected my own oil and metallic watermedia techniques for applying the white trunks in oil, covering the entire painting with watermedia pigments (black, white, silver, graphite) and then scraping the trunk shapes out to reveal the white. They are vivid, stark, dark and glowing all at the same time.