Eucalyptus II Painting

My art is rooted in my emotional connection to the wilderness, which heightens my awareness of how humans manipulate the earth to serve particular purposes. My latest work explores how we see (or don’t see) these natural and structural additions to the environment. These paintings use oil paint on linen canvas to bring the trunks of eucalyptus trees to life. Eucalypts are synonymous with my Northern California home, but their presence embodies a form of colonialism, transplanted from Australia for American settler purpose. Eucalyptus trees’ invasive and fire-prone nature can crowd out California’s native flora, and thus the eucalypt is at once both beautiful and destructive, containing the same nuance as much of our cultural present. By focusing my paintings’ compositions closely on the tree’s bark, I intend to place viewers as if mere inches away from the trunk, provoking the suffocation that indigenous plants experience within eucalyptus groves.