Shona Fraser: HNC Fine Art Gallery

The Seasons’ Trees – an Art Installation for Northumberland Park.

I have a powerful connection with my local Park. Over many years it has played a vital role in helping me to control my own stress and anxiety. I visit regularly to immerse myself in Nature, listen to birdsong and watch the wildlife so I wanted to create a piece of art for the Park itself.

There is a 160-year-old Sycamore tree in the Park – a tree which pre-exists the creation of the Park itself. In the Summer of 2019 part of it collapsed and had to be made safe. Large sections of trunk had to be removed. With the permission of the park wardens I have used two of those sections to create four pieces of art to be displayed in the Park, potentially in four different spaces.

The cycle of Nature has always fascinated me. I have used the seasons as a theme in the past and wanted to work with the changing colours of the Park throughout the year. Each piece comprises one or more painted areas and a small amount of text taken from my personal journal of my visits to the Park. These quotes have been chosen in the hope that they will make the viewer pause and think about their surroundings for a moment.

Using my own photographs as reference material I created paintings of birds on the upper half of each piece. The design of the text is inspired by ancient carved stones with runic inscriptions such as the Danish ‘Jellingsten’. I took a more abstract approach to painting the lower sections of each piece linking patterns found in the images from the Park directly to the text of each design.

While the painted surfaces are waterproof to preserve them, the remaining wood and bark has been left untreated allowing the natural process of decay to continue when they are returned to the Park. I like the idea of the tree trunks becoming home to insects and fungi again and following the natural cycle of life, death and rebirth that continues with each passing Season.

Spring Tree - alkyd oil paints on section of tree trunk 02/2020

Summer Tree - alkyd oil paints on section of tree trunk 02/2020

Autumn Tree - alkyd oil paints on section of tree trunk 01/2020

Winter Tree - alkyd oil paints on section of tree trunk - 2019/20

Earth Prayer Mandala

For this artwork I have chosen to look at light in relation to colour, and the way colour changes as the balance of light and darkness changes. In addition, I wanted to look at Light as a symbol of enlightenment and its use as a symbol for the numerous Gods from many different pantheons. From looking at the mythologies that surround Light – solar Gods and creation stories especially – I was drawn to Hindu and Buddhist art and the use of mandalas as a form of meditation or prayer. This, along-side the Indian tradition of using combinations of beautiful, vibrant colours, the mandala seemed to fit perfectly with my idea to use the colour wheel.

Within the canvas I have used a mixture of design elements and purposeful symbols to create my own mandala that also follows the format of an artist’s colour wheel, exploring the reaction of pigments to both light and darkness. Each segment contains the same basic set of symbols. The only exception is one symbol that has been assigned to each of the twelve colours. This has been informed by my research into the traditional magical, astrological and alchemical correspondences of colours.

As well as being divided into twelve segments, the mandala is divided into seven concentric circles around a central white Sun disc. Each layer was created as a prayer for, or meditation upon, a different aspect of existence. From the Unknowable Light at the centre - the Beginning of Creation – to the Dragon of Darkness at the farthest reaches of the material Universe. The circles in between represent life, the trees, forests, mountains, seas and meadows and everything that lives in them. As I was painting, this work became a prayer for all of these things, with humans, in the fifth circle from the centre, represented by a copy of Johannes Itten’s painting ‘Form-field’, at the balance point with the power of redemption or destruction. Living things are represented by the repeating leaf motifs and lotus petals, which are a traditional form in many mandalas. The sea has been represented by the traditional Japanese ‘segaiha’ pattern. Spirals have been used to represent vortices at the beginning and end of the Universe that lead to higher and lower planes of existence.