Sweet Gum Tree Pod

Taxonomy of American Sweetgum Trees:

Plant taxonomy classifies American sweetgum trees (also spelled "sweet gum") as Liquidambar styraciflua. The sweetgum tree I recommend is Liquidambar styraciflua 'Rotundiloba,' a sterile, non-fruiting culitivar.

Plant Type: Sweet Gum Tree

American sweetgum trees are deciduous trees, indigenous to the southeastern U.S.

Characteristics of American Sweetgum Trees:

American sweetgum trees bear leaves shaped like stars. The leaves provide excellent fall foliage color: in some cases, at the peak of the fall foliage season, some leaves may be red, others purple, others yellow, others orange -- all on the same sweetgum tree! On some trees, the branches are "winged," as on winged euonymus (burning bush), displaying corky flanges. Most people consider their seed pods (or "fruits," "balls," "gumballs," "capsules") to be messy, so I recommend the fruitless 'Rotundiloba.' Rotundiloba grows 60'-70' tall with a spread not even half that, which helps give it a narrowly pyramidal form.

Plant Taxonomy

Where has this artist been?  Such a beautiful rainy day and I ponder ponder ponder about:

Definition: Plant taxonomy is a system of classification for plants. We use the plant taxonomy developed by Linnaeus (1707-1778).

My research has taken me from the studio of late.  However,  I found myself right back where I started today...the STUDIO...and the painting is fine.

I have been working on a Sweet Gum tree pod painting and am in the middle stages of the painting.  I found my object walking my son home from the bus stop.  I then photographed it and made it studio ready.

Studio ready is another term for lets get to the essence of this thing I am painting.  This requires blowing it up and them making it small. Painting it and smearing it away.  Carving it out and rubbing it back into the ground and then revealing its nature again and again until the figure becomes the ground and the ground becomes the figure. 

Ambiguity

So what about structural ambiguity.  Should not there be a spatial differentiation between the figure and the ground.  I say there should be a questioning process in which both are equally important and both exist at the same time without discretion of the two.  The figure and the ground becomes one.  Is this possible?  I ponder these thoughts as I paint---always.

 

There truly is simplicity amongst the chaos.  Without the opposite in each situation the other would not exist.  I guess the law of the universe require this.  Opposites in nature attract and then repel.  How does one combine such opposites?