"A Burr Oak We Pass" by Mark Nesslar

11 x 15 WC/multi-media on two sheets of Yupo

The top sheet is translucent...

you see the darker grayish tree which is another painting under it.

Actually I posted the first sketches for this painting a week or so ago and the poem by Mark was posted with it.  

I am entering this painting in a juried show in Wisconsin that pairs artists and poets.  It's going to be hard to enter this digitally because the idea of the double painting is just not going to show up very well in a photo.  But it is something new for me to try this technique. I took this photo under artificial light so it's not the best either!   

The front tree is a poured painting and then when it was dry I cut it out (so to speak) by re-wettting the rest of the painting and lifting off the color I did not want.  It will be a technique I can demo for my Yupo class (see side bar) on the 18th. The "tree that died" is painted on regular Yupo paper and slipped under the first one.  So it has a feeling of another dimension.

The painting is dedicated to my friend, Kendra, who passed away on August 12.  I have loved this interpretive kind of painting which is somewhat "out of my comfort zone".  So it has been an interesting assignment on many levels.  My friend, Christine knows how to do professional photography or scans for submissions like this and is going to handle that end for me.  

I have to call this "multi-media" since I used ink for the lettering.  

Here is Mark's poem in case you didn't see it the first time:

A Burr Oak We Pass by Mark Nesslar

A tree will sometimes grow in a way such that it appears unnatural.

Say it grew around another tree and that one died, was cut into pieces,

And hauled from the forest by draft horses and log chains, and of the scars,

where it pealed the earth, none remain.

If you choose to look, not at the tree, but the space it describes,

you see where two shapes entwined.  The powerful barked limbs

curled to hold the air as delicately as the lover holds the beloved,

while the space, remembering most patiently the years embrace,

extends outward to encompass all.