'Forest' — Mixed Media on Canvas

'Forest' — Mixed Media on Canvas

The forest has been a recurring subject in my work for many years — not as a picturesque backdrop but as a presence: dense, layered, and resistant to easy reading. 'Forest' is one of a series of paintings that attempt to find a visual equivalent for the experience of being inside a woodland — surrounded by vertical forms, by shifting light, by the particular quality of silence that a forest interior produces.

Process and Materials

The painting was made using mixed media on canvas, with the surface built up through multiple layers of paint and other materials. The vertical rhythms of the composition echo the forms of the trees, but the treatment is non-representational: the aim is not to depict a specific forest but to evoke the experience of being in one.

The palette moves from the deep, earthy greens of the forest floor to the lighter, more luminous tones of the canopy, with areas of warm ochre and gold suggesting the filtering of light through leaves. The surface is heavily worked, with areas of impasto alongside passages of greater transparency, reflecting the visual complexity of the forest interior.