Stump #182, Monoprint, 30cm x 35cm

One-off monoprint — only one available

‘Stump #182’ is from an ongoing Series of over 400 gelliplate monoprints called the Tree Portraits, and originates from a photo of an extraordinary dead stump on Wanstead Flats.

London’s Pollarded street trees (predominantly Lime & Plane, chosen for their resilience to pollution) have recently become something of a multi-valent representation of so many things we do/don’t know about ecology to me; & nature’s real place in our world.​
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Their appearance defines an ongoing relationship with Man; indeed, many of them have a cartoon human appearance, with distinct heads, arms & bodies; and because of this back & forth, dynamic process of growth & removal over time the Trees seem to dance in a particular direction, as they struggle (vainly) to grow bigger, both outwards & upwards. They seem to me like huge Bonsai.​
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There are wonderful areas where growth & weight make the Trees bulge & the bark appears more like a liquid, flowing down around the younger pollarded areas with gravity. This can only really be appreciated from the base, looking straight up.​
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This gets more interesting to me regarding the process of printing them, & the subject, the longer I do them.​
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There’s a certain rhythm to doing these in such volume – I’ve tried to represent every tree in my surrounding streets – the repetition of shapes, forms, movement & texture reminds me of a cruder form of Chinese Sung painting, where artists would spend years representing birds, flowers & landscapes thousands of times, until the process takes over & that subject metamorphoses, & almost becomes something else.​

The latter of the 2020 series, this print included, moved out of the streets & into the parks & woodlands as my research further informed the project, & my interest in the wider ecology.