The Meaning of Trees (and how to avoid military service)

Tree Near Ramsholt, Oil on Canvas, 32 x 22 inches

Another painting from Suffolk. It made me wonder why I zero in on particular trees. When I see a tree like this I find it almost irresistible. An uncle of mine, a psychologist, told me he was once approached by a young man who asked him how to get out of military service (this was in Poland back in the eighties). Simple, he said, when you come before the evaluation board, tell them that you got there on foot, that you had a very nice walk in the park, that there was a particular tree in the park that caught your attention, and that you couldn’t help feeling that it was trying to tell you something… The advice worked: he was turned down by the evaluation board.

This painting is a bit more colourful than some of my other landscapes. I think I was influenced at the time by David Hockney’s pictures of Yorkshire.

Suffolk Landscape

Painting of field with trees in Suffolk

Suffolk Landscape, Oil on Canvas, 32 x 20 inches

View of Bawdsey Peninsula from Ramsholt, Oil on Canvas, 20 x 32 inches

This is a view of Bawdsey Peninsula which I painted alongside my friend Charles Macdonald in September this year. I’ve been painting landscape with Charlie and a group of other friends for the last couple of years. We’ve been to many different places, but this has to be one of the most spectacular views. Somewhere to the left on the horizon is where the River Deben opens out on to the North sea, and if you had bionic eyesight that could also follow the curve of the earth, you would be able to see all the way to the Hague in the Netherlands. We painted the view earlier in the summer before the harvest when everything was golden brown, but the post-harvest view seemed even more interesting with the tractor marks in the field. As we drove into this part of Suffolk I was taken aback by how much it reminded me of Poland (the sandy soil, the cedar and birch trees), and Charlie pointed out that that made perfect sense: it’s all part of the North German peninsula.

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