Description
From the beginning of my work, as a painter, trees have been for me an enormously important source of inspiration. Over and over again I have found myself fascinated by their vast range of colours and by the energy they emanate, a fascination which is shared, I would imagine, by almost everyone. Trees surround our lives like almost nothing else in creation. Their colours change with the changing seasons, evoking and echoing in vivid form the different stages of human existence. They are exalted, we can say, in “the spirituality of light” and are transfigured by the impact of wind and storm, of rain and shadow and light. In Ireland, when the illumined rays of the setting sun sweep over large trees, they tend to create shadows which resemble human profiles. And these shadows are so unique and impressive they seem almost to observe us from the world of the divine.
When I paint I feel that I am merely a medium or a “means” not a “protagonist”. Humility before the vastness and beauty of creation is the only way to be able to capture that sudden revelation of beauty which seems, on occasion, to light up the whole world for an instant, both within and without, before it passes on. We are, all of us, temporary participants in the history of creation. The artist, therefore, can only bow down humbly before whatever great or small epiphanies are granted to her, and hope to transmit to others something of the radiant form and beauty glimpsed along the paths and…beneath the trees.