Tree People

Most of the pleasures of the home we'll be leaving soon have had more to do with the outdoors than with the antiquated interior -- witness the ancient pear and plum trees in our backyard. From the very first sight, I've been enchanted by the interrelationship of these two trees and the particular shapes and thrusts of their branches.

Looking at old sketchbooks, I've found that I've made almost one drawing a year, trying to capture my fascination with these trees. 

They were even my models for a long-ago assignment to create an imaginary exhibition poster. (This imaginary exhibit was so enticing to my feline fans that they clawed the poster off the wall!)

At some point, the fascination was articulated for me in the writings of Renoir, who has proven to be one of my important teachers. He wrote: "When you have learned to draw a tree, you will be able to draw the human figure." Suddenly, I realized that somehow the form of these trees echoed the drawings I most love, Michelangelo's "studies for the Libyan sibyll." Notice here the curve of the spine, the movement of the arms, and the gesture of the left hand (also pictured in a unique study, just below-left of the torso):

-- compared to our plum tree:

We bought our old house in 1985, long before Teardown Mania hit Vancouver's real estate market. Even then, we were the only potential buyers who wanted to live in rather than to demolish it. The pear and the plum trees gave us years of fruit for wines and jams, along with the daily enchantment of their beauty and their attraction to birds and insects. In turn, we were able to give them a 25-year renewed lease on life -- and are perhaps still their debtors.