“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
— Albert Einstein
A Light Persists from the Psychology of Trees series
A Light Exists in Spring exhibition, Marjorie Evans Gallery, Sunset Center, Carmel, CA, 2026
Did I make this image?
I mostly listened to it.
It arrived the way certain piano passages do—uninvited, inevitable, already carrying a memory I had not yet lived. A quiet accumulation of branches, whispers, fragments of sky. A tree standing not in a landscape, but in a state of mind.
This particular tree has been visiting me for some time. Not always in the same form. Sometimes it is younger, sometimes fractured, sometimes barely there, dissolving into its own breath. But in this incarnation, it insisted on something different: a kind of luminous persistence, as if it had discovered that even in uncertainty, it could still glow.
I have always believed trees are archivists.
They do not simply grow; they gather. Light, time, wind, absence. They hold onto things we discard too easily. They remember storms long after we forget the rain. And in this work, I allowed this tree to become something more than itself. A figure. A witness. Perhaps even a reluctant guardian of a world we are slowly unmaking.
There is a tension beneath its quiet beauty. You can feel it if you linger.
The branches stretch outward like questions that refuse to resolve. The surrounding atmosphere feels suspended, as though the air itself is holding its breath. And those small golden flickers, scattered like hesitant confessions, do not celebrate. They resist.
They insist.
I returned, in this piece, to an old ritual. A gesture borrowed from another culture, another time. The delicate act of placing gold not as decoration, but as reverence. Not to embellish the tree, but to acknowledge it. To say: you are still here, and that matters.
Gold, in this context, behaves strangely. It does not shout. It hums. It catches what little light remains and extends it, like a final note sustained longer than expected. It transforms the surface into something that feels almost ceremonial, as if the image itself has been asked to remember its own fragility.
This work became deeply personal without asking permission.
There is a quiet fear woven into it. Not dramatic, not loud. The kind that arrives slowly, like dusk. The awareness that beauty, this kind of quiet, persistent beauty, is not guaranteed. That what feels eternal is, in truth, extraordinarily vulnerable.
And yet, the tree does not collapse under that knowledge.
It stands.
Layered. Complicated. Slightly unreal. Much like memory itself.
I think that is why I am drawn to this way of seeing. Not to explain the world, but to feel its contradictions. To let images remain unresolved, like chords that never quite settle. Because resolution, I’ve learned, can be overrated. It closes doors too soon.
Ambiguity, on the other hand, keeps the air moving.
This image now lives outside of me. It has found a temporary home among other works, other voices, other quiet insistences. It will meet people I will never meet. It will be interpreted in ways I could never predict.
And that is the point.
Because the tree was never mine to begin with.
I simply listened long enough to hear it speak.
Artist Statement
I create images that exist between memory and imagination, where nature becomes a vessel for emotional and psychological landscapes. In this work, the tree transforms into a quiet witness, layered, luminous, and unresolved. The use of gold is not ornamental, but reverential, echoing the fragile persistence of light within an uncertain world. Through ambiguity and atmosphere, I invite viewers to enter the image and complete its meaning through their own inner landscape.
Honored to share that this piece from my Psychology of Trees series has been selected for “A Light Exists in Spring,” curated by Ann Jastrab.
🌿 On view: May 7 – June 23, 2026
📍 Marjorie Evans Gallery, Sunset Center, Carmel, CA
✨ Opening Reception: May 7, 4–6 PM
This one-of-a-kind work revisits a technique close to my heart, where gold becomes a quiet form of reverence rather than decoration.
If you find yourself in Carmel, I would love for this tree to meet you.