Forest for the Trees Oil and acrylic on canvas 24” X 36” “Forest for the Trees” is a layered abstract landscape which combines multiple perspectives of a “God’s eye perspective on a tree ring formation which radiates on top of a layer that incorporates a “blind” effect or the creation of a window blind technique which forms a layer between the tree rings and a complex background linear landscape implying a stand of trees intended to stimulate the viewer to question where is the forest and where is the tree in this layered experience.
The title incorporates the expression “Forest for the Trees” to further the idea which is used by someone who is too involved in the details of a problem to look at the situation as a whole. “You-can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees” means that we sometimes cannot see situations as they really are while we are in the midst of them. In short, we lose our perspective when we are too heavily invested in a particular situation, approach, organization, etc. Tree rings represent the tree and the rings themselves technically can be used to plot events from the past and with certain methods can predict what events could happen in the future.