This one also looks at natural forms, and that's one of my favorite themes, whether I'm in Scotland or at home...I love observing nature because I think nature has a lot to tell us. When I first sketched the beech tree in this painting, I had thought that I would sketch the whole tree, but it turned out to be so complex in just the roots, that I became intrigued with that and never got any further.
This painting stems from an experience that I had when my family and I stayed overnight at a farmhouse in the area of Glen Coe, Scotland. Glen Coe is a misty and moody sort of place where the gray clouds hang low and brooding, bringing to mind the brutal murders that took place there in 1692, perpetrated by one Highland clan on another.
But we awoke one morning in Glen Coe to see the sun shining very brightly on this one mountain. The brilliant light exposed what I think of as the "muscle" of the mountain, revealing all its crooks and crannies and treeless terrain. Like the beech tree, the mountain has been sculpted by time and weathering, worn by the elements of wind and water. Yet both survive; they keep on existing.
And I thought about families, weathered also, but by different elements such as financial problems, relationships, and unexpected circumstances. But like the trees and mountains, they survive, despite the weathering. So the hands at the base of the tree suggest the activity of quilting, as people have done for generations in the mountains. I see them as the hands of grandmothers making quilts to pass on to their grandchildren; they grow up and pass their quilts down to their children, and the family continues. This painting is owned by the artist.
Ellen Elmes
PO Box SVCC
Richlands, VA 24641-1101
email: ellen.elmes@sw.edu
phone: 276.964.7205
fax: 276.964.7720