Lost

My life is beginning to focus on art and expression in general. I've created this blog to help me document my ideas, thoughts and progress. I'll start with a recently completed work devoted to a friend of mine.
In trying to portray reality I've reduced myself to following formulas like the fractal branching shown in this tree. I begin with the trunk and bifurcate into two smaller segments of slightly random length, direction and shape. This process is repeated, with passive consideration for composition, lighting and perspective. Soon, almost of its own accord a tree is formed.

I've tried to make it a representation not only of a tree, but of the fractal nature of trees. It is an attempt at the understanding of and empathy with the growth of living systems as well as their portrayal.

One night I'd been playing with form and composition in sets of lines. What makes one group of squiggles more interesting than another? I spent a few hours reading about Chinese calligraphy and had some attempts at doing my own in the form of these glyphs. Some of these lines reminded me of the silhouettes of natural objects such as corals, or branches. I realised it would not be difficult for me to apply my calligraphy attempts to a 3 dimensional space simply by shading the lines. The lower branch of this tree and the background silhouettes are an experiment of that type.

The poem is a northwest Indian one translated by David Wagoner.

Standstill, the trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a branch does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

I found it suggestive of the same things I've tried to explore in the understanding of how nature works and why we find it so impressive.

The rest of the image is largely decor. The background is a hubble telescope photo of the Carina nebula. The staghorn fern is something personal to me from my memories of the ones growing on fig trees where I grew up. Although it looks nice, this is something I'm trying to move away from. I'd rather all elements of the picture compliment each other not only visually but contextually.