The Tree I See – Johanna Skelly
April 17 – 28, 2024
OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, April 18, 2024 – 6 – 8 pm
Join us IN-PERSON at the Leslie Grove Gallery.
See the show, meet the artist, bring a friend!
ABOUT THE TREE I SEE
The Tree I See features the paintings and drawings I created over a two-year period. Upon moving into my downtown Toronto studio, I was struck by the magnificent maple tree that grew outside my window. I reached for a box of chalk pastels and did my first, fast sketch just as the light was beginning to fade.
My fascination with the tree started that day. The drawing of the tree itself quickly expanded to become central to my life and to my daily art practice. It anchored me during a difficult transition into a new life. The resulting forty images – rendered in pastels on paper and oils on canvas – reflect that fascination. Having just moved in, my impulse to use chalk pasts was serendipitous…they were close at hand when I decided to draw the first tree. I discovered, quite by chance, that the medium offered a wonderful sense of speed and spontaneity that allowed me to capture the fast-changing transformations made at different times of day and different seasons.
These works stand as an autobiography, a visual memoir of passing time. As well as the paintings and drawings, I made notations, jotted down my thoughts and reflected on what I was seeing, and though this was never intended, this body of work has resulted in a published memoir titled The Tree I See: Accidental Reflections of an Artist.
Featured Artist:
Johanna Skelly.