Ancient Trees

The Ancient Trees series began with a simple fascination: the realization that some trees have been alive for hundreds, even thousands, of years.

I am drawn to these trees not simply because of their age or unusual forms, but because they seem to carry their histories in plain sight. Their twisted trunks, hollowed branches, scars, and weathered surfaces are records of time. Each tree has been shaped by drought, fire, storms, animals, and the slow passage of generations. In their physical forms, I see something remarkably close to biography.

I approach these trees through the visual language of portraiture. Rather than treating them as specimens or anonymous elements of a landscape, I present each one as an individual subject. Composition, scale, silhouette, and the careful rendering of distinctive features become ways of revealing character and presence. In this sense, the drawings are portraits—not of people, but of living beings whose individuality has been shaped over extraordinary spans of time.

Working in graphite, I draw these trees at a large scale, allowing their individual character to emerge through thousands of marks. The process is intentionally slow. I want the time it takes to make the drawing to become part of the work—to spend enough time looking that the tree becomes more than an image or specimen, and begins to feel like a presence.

The series is ultimately about endurance and memory. These trees have witnessed landscapes change, cultures rise and disappear, and countless human lives pass beneath their branches. They remind me that our own lives occupy only a brief moment within a much larger story.

I make these drawings as a form of attention and preservation: an attempt to look closely at something that has endured, and to give that encounter a lasting form on paper.