Williams Plaza Project: Base of the Redwood

Here is a new piece completed for the Williams Plaza Project: “Base of the Redwood.” For this grand piece, I reserved the largest, widest slab!

For this design, I used the giant sequoia from my previous painting, From the Forest Floor, and adapted the composition to fit the shape of the live edge slab.

You can watch my painting process from start to finish here!

You’ll notice that I left part of the wood unpainted at the bottom. It was important to me to leave the beautiful details of this giant knot in the wood showing through. It is one of the most interesting elements of this art piece, emphasizing that what we are looking at is a tree upon a tree: the material used to create the art is worked into the theme of the art.

My challenge was to figure out how to work this natural feature of the wood seamlessly into the composition while still making it stand out as a noticeable feature that will draw viewers in. The organic shapes created by the grain of the wood work well alongside the organic shapes of the painted tree bark.

This is very “painterly,” stylized rendition of a tree, made up of abstract shapes–a pattern of yellow circles in the foliage, the curved lines of the graceful tree branches in various shades of violet, and much of the redwood tree’s rough bark painted in an unconventional bright blue.

This painting will hang on the first floor of the Williams Plaza building. Along with the gigantic 5-panel piece, Windows to the Sun, this will bring a forest theme to the whole first floor of the building.

This large, bold artwork will bring color, imagination, and a warm, sunny feeling into the space!