From the beginning of my work, as a painter, trees have been for me an enormously important source of inspiration. Over and over again I have found myself fascinated by their vast range of colours and by the energy they emanate, a fascination which is shared, I would imagine, by almost everyone. Trees surround our lives like almost nothing else in creation. Their colours change with the changing seasons, evoking and echoing in vivid form the different stages of human existence. They are exalted, we can say, in “the spirituality of light” and are transfigured by the impact of wind and storm, of rain and shadow and light. In Ireland, when the illumined rays of the setting sun sweep over large trees, they tend to create shadows which resemble human profiles. And these shadows are so unique and impressive they seem almost to observe us from the world of the divine.
For me Italy has been a kind of base from which to observe and contemplate Irish trees, and Ireland has been a place to muse over and contemplate Italian trees. The warmth which sweeps over the Italian mulberry trees in Umbria bring evidence of silken trails from both the distant and the recent past. These mulberry (Gelsi) trees give, in autumn, the feeling of a thousand fingers reaching up into the sky. They oblige you to stop and stare, and then they completely absorb you. They have a linear quality which is quite unique. In Ireland, in contrast, there exists a tiny orchard in County Westmeath which seems to gather to itself an entirely different world of meaning and beauty. Here the fruit trees have undergone the rigours of an entire century of seasons. They have witnessed death and rebirth a hundred times over, so that both branch and trunk have been twisted and turned in astonishing ways in the process. And, what is more, they have observed over the years, down below them, men and women bending to pick up the ripened and un-ripened apples and other fruit. The trees in this Irish orchard, like the Italian mulberry trees, reach out to the sky in unforgettable ways. But their gestures are, in fact, more dramatic and, at times, even audacious. They have usurped, it would seem, the world of human emotion. From one season to another, they lean into our thoughts and feelings, shaking to the very root our consciousness.
I feel a hundred years of Irish history passing above and under these trees. I think of people who were happy and people who suffered near them. I think even of those who hid in their old branches. I see people reading or praying under them, and finding, in the great over-reaching branches, the comfort of a piece of heaven. I think also of people who may have crossed under the trees without ever noticing their beauty.
Myself, I have felt the atmosphere of this place in all seasons and in all moments of the day and night. When I began to paint the trees in a semi-abstract, semi-figurative way, I let the trees tell me what to say, just as I did with the Mulberry trees in Italy. It has been an adventure to do both of these series of works. To discover also, of late, that the poet, John Ennis, has been writing verse about this very same orchard in Ireland, about these very same trees, has been a cause for me of no small delight.
Over the years my work has been influenced by Venetian painters such as Tintoretto and Veronese, Canaletto and Titian; and, on the Irish side, by Manie Jellet and Jack Yeats. Other painters whose work has fascinated me both in form and colour are Matisse, Magritte, Bellini, Antonello da Messina, and also certain Flemish painters whose work is justly celebrated for its unusual atmosphere of stillness.
When I paint I feel that I am merely a medium or a “means” not a “protagonist”. Humility before the vastness and beauty of creation is the only way to be able to capture that sudden revelation of beauty which seems, on occasion, to light up the whole world for an instant, both within and without, before it passes on. We are, all of us, temporary participants in the history of creation. The artist, therefore, can only bow down humbly before whatever great or small epiphanies are granted to her, and hope to transmit to others something of the radiant form and beauty glimpsed along the paths and…beneath the trees.
Breda Catherine Ennis