Woodland Silhouette Art by Alison Chase
I grew up like a vast number of suburban kids, thinking a forest might be the group of trees at the edge of the neighborhood. It wasn't until college in upstate New York, and later, for many years in Chadds Ford, PA when running miles into vast wooded areas and along rivers revealed a deep connection I have to the shapes, shadows and emotions of the deciduous forest and the creatures who dwell there. While I've been making art amidst the amazing distractions of raising children and the less-wonderful distraction of keeping a day-job, I've been fortunate to live in a place where I see the silhouette of the tree line, and not cell towers. It's in the sublime company of the forest that I make art connected to a story I derive from day to day interactions with it, watching seasons changing, compositions formed and lost. Over and over this relationship yields inspiring insights, and while we enjoy it as a family, I often think each of us takes something different away. I like to think that when someone buys a work of mine on etsy, they might be preserving a page from my ongoing creative diary with that forest.