Oak: One Tree, Three Years, Fifty Paintings
By Stephen Taylor
112 pages;
Princeton Architectural Press
Some books show you how to
laugh, some show you how to think, but, every once in a while, one will show
you how to live. The exquisite Oak: One Tree, Three Years, Fifty Paintings follows the story of artist
Stephen Taylor, who decided to paint the same oak tree in the English
countryside every day for three years. The titles of his ensuing works reveal
the detail with which he pursued his vision: Oak with Crows, Oak After Snow,
Oak at Night in Winter, Oak in Early Spring. There are no abstract oaks or evocative splashes of ink meant to suggest
an oak. The trees are realistic, some with an almost photographic
precision—revealing the larger point. As the oak changes by the month or hour,
the surrounding environment changes. Barley fields are cut down and rise again,
jets stream by through the sky, blue tits forage in the leaves, and damselflies
swarm below the branches. A singular plant becomes a totem for the passage of
time and seasons—and you, as the viewer—begin to change too, becoming more
observant and aware of the tiny yet enormous natural transformations that take
place each day and minute. Seeing, in the truest sense, is the lesson here, one
that's taught with such elegance that you'll be bewitched into stopping and
contemplating the birch or maple in your own yard that's serving—as T.S. Eliot
once described trees—as "the still point of the turning world."
— Leigh Newman
