Almond Branch, What do you See? 15”x24” oil on primed paper, 2020
This painting…this painting came to me right at the start of the lockdowns in 2020. I was in the midst of a studio challenge I’d set for myself to be in my studio daily for an entire month, so I was also on the hunt for inspiring music to accompany my task, when I discovered James Newton Howard’s original score for “A Hidden Life”. Once again I found myself overcome by the beauty of a musical score for another Terrence Malick film. I should have known that something was going to swell within me.
It was only a few tracks in when I noticed the title “Surrounded by Walls” and an image seized my attention. The shutdown was all too fresh across the globe as well, but I didn’t feel shut in. I knew this was going to be a real chance for me, even catalyzing my studio challenge goal, to focus on my creative space within my own walls. What could have easily felt like a prison instead became my secret place.
The first image that came to mind was one of hope and I’d built upon that first imagination, but I knew it needed to grow into something more full. I knew that I needed to explore this idea more deeply, to investigate the details of this inspiration. In that same few days of iteration in my sketchbook, exploring a picture of hope, the verse Jeremiah 1:11 came to mind…and that’s when I knew what I needed to paint: clinging to hope in a desolate place. And I knew I needed to incorporate that particular imagery into the piece, especially as that verse contains a beautiful play on words. That’s when my approach to this piece became more measured and methodical, and not simply reactive as is sometimes my wont. This scene required a convincing architecture to bear its substance.
The crucible of this challenge was drawing up all kinds of lessons from my university days, building an enormous stellated dodecahedron with my freshman art classmates - even trying to mathematically map its internal shadows in our drawings - and feeling the weight and power of reality. I also recalled the first lesson in my first oil painting class, building an architectural maquette for still life practice, exploring how light moved through an interior space. I found myself building a model based on my drawings and adding a dedicated light source to find the effect of light I required. I even brought in a small trig to help construct the light play around the almond branch. Working with this structure gave me the liberty to add details as needed, and to create an inhabitable space to encounter hope.