Summer of 2020

I was commissioned by a local architecture firm and Home Forward, Portland, Oregon’s housing authority, to create paintings on 14 live edge slabs to hang on all nine floors of the Williams Plaza building, a low-income housing project for senior citizens.

The slabs were cut from two large trees on the property that had to be cut down. The sustainable solution of turning the trees into art for the building lessened this loss. They will go on to fill the building with beautiful, peaceful nature images that will be enjoyed every day by the residents.

The themes of the different paintings in this body of work range from forest landscapes to various flowers and open skies. All of the imagery was inspired by past artwork that I’ve done.

The details of the project are shown below:

I was commissioned by a local architecture firm and Home Forward, Portland, Oregon’s housing authority, to create paintings on 14 live edge slabs to hang on all nine floors of the Williams Plaza building, a low-income housing project for senior citizens.

The slabs were cut from two large trees on the property that had to be cut down. The sustainable solution of turning the trees into art for the building lessened this loss. They will go on to fill the building with beautiful, peaceful nature images that will be enjoyed every day by the residents.

The themes of the different paintings in this body of work will range from forest landscapes to various flowers and open skies. All of the imagery was inspired by past artwork that I’ve done.

Here is the first and largest work of art finished for this project!
“Windows to the Sun.”

Each live edge slab is about 5 feet tall, and with them all together in a row, the finished piece is about 9-10 feet across.

For the design, I created a new rendition of my previous painting, “Welcome the Sun.”

With the image spread out across all five panels, it is reminiscent of a row of tall narrow windows. Hence the title “Windows to the Sun.”

Enjoy this time lapse video showing my creative process!

The sensuous lines and curves, cracks in the wood, and the patterns of the wood grain along the edges of each slab give endless visual interest.

I very much wanted to maintain the impression that even though we are looking at paintings on the wall, we are also looking at cross-sections of a tree!

This gigantic piece will grace the lobby of the building.

Because of the feeling that we are looking out a row of windows into a sunny sky, and the perspective created by the angles of the tall trees, this art piece will make the lobby feel bigger by creating a sense of depth on the wall where it is displayed!

This artwork will bring the forest indoors, providing a joyful, peaceful and sunny atmosphere.

Here is “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!

These 8 paintings are the smaller of the slabs. Each one will hang right outside the elevator on a different floor of the housing development they are going in.

Here’s a time lapse video of the creation of these last 8 paintings for this project:

“Whimsical Lotus With Dragonfly”

This painting is definitely whimsical. There were two interesting knots in the wood that I chose not to paint over, and these two details inherent in the slab ended up determining the whole rest of the design! I made some of the bubbles/orbs, or whatever you want to call them, to match the natural knots in the wood, so that they blend in. You’ll notice them only when looking more closely at the details.

Some of my past work in my Lotus series includes similar bubble-like imagery. I think it’s playful and brings a child-like feeling to the image. I imagine the lotus flower rising up out of the water and opening into a glorious bloom.

The circles filling the space around it contribute to that rising feeling, like a celebration, or a bubbling-up of life. The dragonfly on its swirling flight path contributes to this feeling of movement.

Here is “Lotus With Rain.”

With the calming teal and blue colors, the gracefully formed lotus flower, and the imagery of cool water streaming down, it’s a grounding and peaceful image, contrasted against the jagged edges of the wood slab.

When I originally started painting lotus flowers, I learned about their use as a Buddhist symbol of our choice to be our best selves. The lotus flower grows out of the dark watery muck of a muddy pond. It pulls its nutrients out of that smelly dark muck, transforming it into something elevated and beautiful, with its huge dramatic flower petals opened up towards the sky.

The idea is that through something as simple as mindfulness, just by paying attention to our breathing and trying to focus the mind on the present moment, we can calm the chaos in our minds and transform “the muck.” I think we need to set this intention more than ever when the world outside us is chaotic too.

We can center ourselves, calm our anger and pain, and then try to be a force for good in the world by loving and helping others. We’re more equipped to do good when we take care of ourselves in this way. At its root, it’s about taking personal responsibility and living with intention.

Here is “Sunlit Tulips.”

Aaahhh, the sun!!! This may be my favorite of the paintings on live edge slabs, or certainly one of them. I’ve always been enamored with the way the sun shines through the petals of tulips, lighting them up and making them glow a pure white.

And in spots where the petals overlap and the light doesn’t shine through as much, you can see the deeper jewel tones in the flowers.

I think that wanting to capture the many qualities of sunlight is a huge motivation for many painters!

This painting just makes me happy.

It reminds me a lot of a similar painting I created way back in 2005, which I called “Tulips in the Morning.”

This one is called “Poppies in Blue Sky.”

I love this image of the poppies reaching and growing with their little faces turned up towards the sunshine and the open sky.

Here’s a little excerpt from my recent article, “Why the Artists are Okay:”

Artists have a growth mindset.

Learning new things is woven into the process of making stuff. Artists think of ourselves as perpetual students, and we tend to respond to any challenge by asking a lot of questions.

Even after you’ve achieved ostensible expert status, with the requisite 10,000 hours under your belt, you still know that there is always, always, room for improvement. We have high standards in our quest for quality. For artists, growth is the default state.

An image of colorful poppies growing towards a bright sky illustrates the feeling of growth!

This painting is called “Above the Mountains.”

This slab was one of the most challenging ones to design, and it ended up being one of my favorites in the end! If you look closely, you’ll notice these details: on the right is a huge mass of tree knots, patterns in the wood grain, holes and cracks, creating an irregular-shaped edge to the right side of the slab that is full of interesting shapes.

What to do with all this? I turned it into a tall mountain!

Then, there’s a split in the wood, forming a deep crack that goes completely from top to bottom down the center of the piece. I worked this crack into the design so you don’t even notice it on first glance, but you’ll see it when you look closely. At the top, it runs along the edge of one of the clouds in the sky, all the way down to the bottom through the center of the tree in the foreground.

A bird of prey with a massive wingspan soars above this landscape of mountains, sky, river and trees!

“Wildflowers Reaching.”

I love this view of flowers seen from below, from an ant’s eye view.

I think it feels natural to me because I’ve painted so many trees from this angle!

“Perched in Sunlight.”

The design of this painting is a new rendition of my previous painting called “King of the Clearing.”

The vertical format of the live edge slab along with the addition of the bright teal color gives this rendition of the same theme an entirely different feeling.

In this painting, I’ve also added the row of rounded stones across the bottom, as a way of incorporating the natural knot of the wood into the design!

The Williams Plaza building will now be full of nature and sunshine!