With this painting I was given a theme, trees. The problem with this is that lately I have been wanting to do another painting about space, namely of a planet. I was suck for some time trying to come up with an idea of mixing space and trees. After doing research I came across images of the big bang and the expansion of the universe. They showed this by having a starting paint, the big bang, and from there the expansion drew out in a cone shape. Inside the cone showed stars and galaxies. I quite enjoyed this imagery, not so much the cone shape itself, but of the emptiness of everything around the cone. After doing a few abstract and non-representational paintings, I wanted to make one with a lot of negative space and/or bare canvas. This would give me the opportunity to do this, along with a theme of space and trees. However, this would show the looseness of the main theme of the painting, tree.
I have to admit that this is not one of my best paintings. In fact, I almost scrapped the project because of how unfocused it is. This comes from not keeping close enough to the main theme of the project, the tree. The image of the expansion of the universe, to me, looked like the trunk of a tree. With this I created a ‘tree’ where one does not see the top (branches and leaves) of the tree or the bottom (roots) of the tree. However, one can see into the tree, the glowing heart of the tree. All around the tree is nothingness, as it is alone in the world.
How this relates to the expansion of the universe is that the heart of the tree is observable universe, and the nothingness around the tree showing that the universe is the only thing out there in space. With the top and bottom of the tree, the bottom shows that universe is still expanding, however someday it will end. Some theories suggest that the universe will collapse in on itself, known as the big crunch. Where the entire universe will collapse into itself to a single point in space. After this another big bang would happen, thus creating a new universe. This is where the top of the universe comes in. It was the previous universe.
Again, somewhat all over the place of the themes of the painting. Also to note, a better representation of the expansion of the universe would be that of an expanding balloon. I thought of doing that, showing an orange tree with the oranges showing a galaxy in it. However, I thought that would be too close of copy of the “Men in Black” marbles ending.
Best,
Sean
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