A year of tree
From the 27th June 2018 and the 26th June 2019, I took weekly Polaroids of the tree a tree near where I work at the National Art School. To me, this tree feels like the heart of the school. Just outside the inner circle of the campus that is the chapel, this is a central gathering place, a place for collecting the sun or enduring the wind, watching and waiting. By recording the changes of this tree over the space of a year, this work aims to encapsulate a sense of endurance in that change. It is presented here as both the sequence of original Polaroids and a spatial layering of those times.
100 trees
In 2015 I set out to draw 100 trees. These Drawings are like portraits of the trees, and at the same time, like a diary; Each one embodies a specific time and place that I inhabited with that particular tree. They also reflect the events and places of my life. For instance, for a while I focused on drawing trees in a beautiful park near where I live that have subsequently been cut down so that a freeway can be built. As I only draw the tree, the gaps left by the ribbons that have been tied around these fated trees hint at their embattled state.
Maryanne Coutts 