All the Light in the Boreal Forest

All the Light in the Boreal Forest  ©Kesler Woodward 2022  Acrylic on Canvas  36" x 36"

It's light late into the evening already, this spring, and the boreal forest glows in that late light. The tops of the trees catch the last of the sun's rays as the forest floor begins to darken. The treetops suddenly, briefly blaze and then quietly begin to soften and subside into the not-quite-dark of the spring night.

Here, in that late light, are some of the trees I love---the most ubiquitous trees of the Interior Alaska forest--white spruce, aspen, and birch.

Whispering Tree  ©Kesler Woodward 2022  Acrylic on canvas  40" x 16"

For forty-five years I have painted birches more than any other kind of tree, and more often than any other subject. In 2005, Red Hen Press of Los Angeles published Blaze - a beautiful 160-page volume featuring  thirty years of my paintings of birches, juxtaposed with poems by my friend, Alaska Poet Laureate Peggy Shumaker.

I made paintings in response to Peggy's poems, she made poems in response to my paintings, and we selected other, wholly independent images and poems from past decades that we felt could speak to one another. Even today when I open that volume, seeing my work in conversation with her poems makes me see my own paintings in new ways.

Very few people, even those who know my work well, notice that I paint aspens almost as often birches.

Whispering Tree is a tall aspen whose crown I admire almost daily in different lights as I make the short, 15-stride walk between our back door and my studio.

The Celts and other ancient peoples called the aspen the "whispering tree," as its leaves tremble in even the slightest breeze. They told tales of how the fluttering leaves helped the wind speak to the ancestors, make connections between this world and the next, and bring gifts of inspiration and poetry.

Every tree of the boreal forest abounds with myth and mystery in the old stories. Every year I learn more of those stories, and though I don't illustrate them, I can't help but think some of those tales creep into every painting I make. 

         

Three April Drawings - Studio Window, Lodgepoles, and Trail to the Forest - Pen and ink on Rives BFK paper. 13" x 9" each. Unframed.

I don't draw often. A note to myself on the studio wall says, "Draw More!" but I very seldom make time to do it. As soon as I finish one painting, I'm eager to begin the next. But a few weeks ago, I decided I just wanted to take a break and draw for a few days, and I so enjoyed simply responding with pen on good paper to the views from my studio windows and to some of the less-familiar trees I'm getting to know in the "Exotic Tree Plantation" that's part of the University of Alaska arboretum.

Studio Window is, as the title suggests, the view from the big north window of my studio, of just a few aspens on the steep slope below, casting sharp shadows on the still-pristine snow, still 3-feet deep in early April. 

Lodgepoles was a fun drawing because only someone really into trees and looking very hard would notice, from this vantage point, that they are lodgepole pines planted in an experimental plot, and not the white spruces that are everywhere here.

And Trail to the Forest, drawn with a finer-tipped pen, is a view of a birch and an aspen from the west window in my studio, at the very beginning of the endless trails that we and several of our friends run on three times every week, all year-round.  

It's been sunny every day here for a month. The sap is rising in the birches, and I'm tapping a few of them to make syrup. Happy spring!

Comments

[Kes Woodward]

Thank you, Carol! What a great story! I just love the trees--all kinds of trees. I grew up visiting pine forests with my grandfather, who was a lumberman, and my father was always telling me how much better Longleaf Pines are than the other pines of the South--shortleaf, slash, loblolly, and the like. The Lodgepole Pines in this drawing are among those planted in 1974 by University of Alaska forest scientists in the Arboretum here, from 29 different seed sources in SE Alaska, British Columbia, and Yukon, to see how they would fare and to measure their rate of growth. The studies ended decades ago, and I'm among very few who have visited the plot in recent decades, but I've been in there every week for the past year, and I'm fascinated with the differences among the Lodgepole Pines, Scots Pines, Jack Pines, and Siberian Pines still growing in the little 2-acre study compound along with lots of other trees from around the Circumpolar North!

[Carol Bryner]

All of these are lovely, Kes. I often feel like I don't draw enough. These drawings are really nice, and I like your explanations of their origin.
When my brother and I were young, our parents took us to a ranch in Wyoming every other summer. I remember a group from a Montana tribe coming down to the Big Horns, where the ranch was, to get Lodgepole pines. I always was intrigued by the name, Lodgepole. I can't remember what tribe they were from, but my 6 year old brother expected TV Indians, and he was very disappointed because they were wearing tennis shoes! Enjoy the spring!