Confusion

This is the bark of a Japanese Cypress tree and, more so than most of my shots, I’m not sure I would have known I was looking at tree bark if I hadn’t been there holding the camera. There’s so much going on - the colors, the textures, the patterns. And why is it the way it is: the placement of the ripples, the peeling of sections of bark. Such complexity in something as simple as the bark of a tree. It takes my breath away.

The first question that comes to me as an observer is: What am I looking at? That’s fairly easy to resolve. Then, eventually: Is there a deeper story here, beyond the mix of visual elements that confront me? And hot on its heels: Does there need to be?

It can raise questions for me, as much about what I think “art” is as the specifics of this image. Discussions about art are fraught and, for me, not particularly enlightening. Suffice it to say that I enjoy the looking, being challenged to see structure, beauty, harmony, and perhaps meaning in small slices of the natural world. That’s enough!