Spring is in the Air
Oil on canvas
24 x 30 inches
2020

On a trip to France in 2005, I was inspired by the agricultural landscape and idyllic skies to begin my “Trees Leaving” series. I was thinking about the threat we have become to our natural environment and remembering Rene Magritte’s floating men in bowler hats. I had always anthropomorphized elements of landscape in my work (tree bark as skin, branches as arms), and that flowed into transforming Magritte’s businessmen into trees.

After the pandemic hit, I continued the series with a twist. Rather than one or lots of trees leaving, chunks of land were leaving like communities lifting into the sky. In April 2020, at the height of the Covid outbreak in Boston where I live, the news was dreadful. But outside, the trees and flowers were bursting into bloom like never before. I painted Spring is in the Air, and while the title suggests a warm breeze carrying the scent of first flowers, it also carries a note of doubt. Being up in the air feels undecided and uncertain of direction.The simultaneous beauty and horror resonated deeply, as this duality had been always been the focus of my painting.