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"Ancient Oak Cathedral (circa 1560-1971)"
Date: 02-18-2022 Painting Number 0024-WC Source: Created from memory Size: 24 X 18 Media: Watercolor Surface: Master's Touch 140 # Cold Pressed Paper Paint: Student Grade SFE: Hand Processed from gathered materials Lake Erie Limestone Pebble Gray Sycamore Twig Charcoal Brown/Black Availability: Prints Available: Smaller: By resolution agreement 24 X 18: $XX.XX Larger: By resolution agreement Comment: This painting is the product of an over 50 year old painful memory. It is of a stand of White Oak trees in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Judging from the diameter of these trees the were probably alive before Columbus came to the new world. They were standing when George Washington served as an officer under General Braddock, and his days at near by Fort Necessity. He may have even walked beneath them. They were standing for the founding of our nation, during it’s growth, the Civil War, two World Wars and many other wars. I encountered them during a forest hike as a teenager. This was one of my favorite places. Then one day I came home from college for a weekend and, as I usually did, I went to meditate and pray under their branches, which were themselves larger than most other trees. On turning off the trail to go where they stood, in a hidden ravine, I was not prepared for the horror that greeted me. They were gone! Someone had cut every one of them down and left them on the forest floor to rot. Such beauty, wantonly destroyed. I will always morn them. I decided to paint my recollection of them as a tribute. The painting shows me, as a teen, sitting beneath the largest oak of the group. The grove was bounded by an almost impenetrable stand of Green-Briar, Mountain Laurel, Maple Leaf Viburnum and Rose-bay Rhododendron. All shown in the painting.