This painting came about from the experience of visiting some of the stone circles and standing stones that are fairly commonplace in the northeasten Grampian region of Scotland. They come from the time period of the Pictish and Celtic peoples, early inhabitants of certain areas of the British Isles. When the Romans left Britain in 410, virtually all of Scotland north of Edinburgh and Glasgow was occupied by the Picts, a warlike people about whom little is known. In the 9th century, they suddenly disappeared, leaving behind few archaeological remains, but literally hundreds of standing stones, decorated with intricate symbols. The Celts arrived from central Europe about 800 BC, and brought the Gaelic language with them.
I was fascinated with the mystery of these stones, just as I have always been wondrous about the beauty and longevity of virgin trees in North America, particularly the white oak of the Appalachian mountains. I think about a tree being in one spot for four or five hundred years, and all the events that took place around that tree. So when I painted these images - the beech tree on the right representing a very common, although not particularly old Scottish tree, the oak tree from home, and the Pictish standing stone - I thought about them all holding in secrets of the past. In the way that certain African and Oceanic tribes create masks with closed eyes symbolizing the keeping in of the spirit, the keeping in of the intangible and the unspeakable, I painted the knotholes in the trees as closed eyes in a similar sense, hence, the title of the work, "Secrets".
After establishing that idea in the setting of one of the standing stone areas that my family and I visited, I extended this new growth, this vine from the trees, in the shape of a Celtic knot. The Celtic knot design was utilized in many of the stones, and was carved out hundreds of years ago, representing possibly, the idea of infinity, the cyclical nature of life, the connectedness of all beings, or perhaps, simply the beauty of a design... we'll never really know. But I used it as a metaphor for the continuity of life, in the sense that in the vine are open eyes for the present, with acorns intertwined as a symbol of the future. This painting is owned by Paul and Shelley Lallande.
Ellen Elmes
PO Box SVCC
Richlands, VA 24641-1101
email: ellen.elmes@sw.edu
phone: 276.964.7205
fax: 276.964.7720