Building Forests

"building forests" is a series made up of five watercolour paintings.

what motivated this series of five paintings is a thought that came to me one day: you find yourself in the middle of a forest, lost and uncertain. you don’t know how you came to be here and you don’t know where you are. suddenly, you hear the sound of a phone ringing.

i’m still not entirely sure why this thought came to me but it launched me into an exhaustive period of uncovering, reading and thinking about forest literature. one of my favourite is 森のはずれで by 小野正嗣 (at the edge of the forest, masatsugu ono). i loved (and still do) the writing because it is uneasy and it rejects safety. we talk about the heart of the forest: evasive and elusive! why should it be so seductive and fearful to us? perhaps the forest is restless and uneasy because it is secretive. it hides, hides, hides, refuses to be seen and we are terrified of the unknown.