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| Black Spruce Oil on Canvas 30" x 60" |
Next in the holiday highlight series is another favorite, Shelley Mitchell.
Mitchell is often recognized for her stunning portraits of dory's floating in water, and her ability to capture the reaction of these and other objects in water. This past season her focus has been the landscape found near and around her studio in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia which culminated in her solo exhibition titled
"All Around Us"
Black Spruce is one of many impressive examples in this body of work.
Shelly Speaks about the painting:
“Many years ago when my British cousins first came to visit Nova Scotia the thing they were most amazed by was the vast extent of untouched forest they drove through to get to the city from the airport! I was taken aback by this as I took our huge woodlands very much for granted but their observation has stuck with me over the years and made me look very closely at the trees. The casual glance sees them as a solid mass, much as a large crowd of people can appear. On closer observation the trees, like the people, emerge as unique and individual. Every tree in our vast forest is worth a second look. Once in a while you notice an exceptionally fine specimen such as the one I've painted in "Black Spruce". This particular tree stands alone between the road I travel and the water of Martin's Inlet in Lunenburg County and in spite of direct exposure to storms and winter winds has grown tall and straight and become, for me, a dignified and lovely example of the singular beauty many trees can attain. Although the Black Spruce is a very common species of tree and often considered to be "scrub" I wanted to express how shapely, graceful and truly elegant they are. Like all my tree paintings, this one is anthropomorphic in that it is meant to embody human traits and the human condition in the form of a tree and describe how sublime a common tree, like a common person, can be." Shelley Mitchell
