Deep in the Wood — Trees as Art

Trees have always featured prominently in art but since the 1960s a handful of post-modern artist have presented trees, sometimes unaltered, as sculpture…

There’s a difference between making art out of a tree and making art with a tree. Wood has been used as a material in art since prehistoric times. It’s commonly used as a sculptural material and of course, is the basis for most paper, which is about the most common art material, very often used in conjunction with a wooden pencil, or charcoal!

A tree already fulfills many of the criteria art critics use to formally analyse sculpture. Imagine a tree in your mind’s eye or, better still, if there’s a tree in sight, take a look at it. Is the tree three-dimensional? Does it have a visual rhythm in its pattern that exploits the interplay between positive and negative form? Is there a progression or tension between symmetry and asymmetry? Does it reference landscape and/or the human form?

In most cases, an unaltered tree can tick all the boxes and an average tree placed next to an average sculpture will be aesthetically superior. Really, the only thing preventing a tree from being classed as ‘art’ is the earliest and enduring definition of art as, “a thing of beauty that was of human, as opposed to natural, origin…”

The ancient sacred groves of the Druids are perhaps the earliest surviving examples of trees planted with intent to…