This series draws on the ancient Celtic Ogham alphabet, in which each letter is a tree. Each painting carries the spirit of its tree into contemporary form through abstraction, collage, and North American roots.
Saille — the Willow — began with a drawing of the willow tree. The palette draws on Van Gogh's Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear: yellow-greens, blue-greens, cream, and red-orange. The willow's presence shifts the familiar symbolic forms into something mysterious, almost otherworldly — the tree of dreams and the unseen.