Live Oak / Dair in Process

Live Oak / Dair

Live oaks are all around me here in Gulf Coast Texas, as they are common throughout the southeast United States. They are sometimes draped with Spanish moss. They are amazing trees, living long lives, and spreading their giant limbs horizontally, occasionally touching the ground and then rising upward from there. In the Irish Tree Alphabet (Ogham, pronounced OH-um), the oak is represented by the letter Dair. In this series I connect North American trees with the Irish trees that the Tree Alphabet referenced. I collaged the letter shape into the lower right-hand corner of this painting. The bird is the bluejay — beloved stasher of acorns, and believed by the ancient Celts to be the soul of a Druid, forever planting the sacred oak. The symbolic geometric forms evoke the Divine Feminine, since they are all related to the circle. The Live Oak leaves have quite a variety of shapes, and many of the leaves are collaged with patterned paper to express the lively quality of the leaves. In February or March, these trees drop most of their leaves and some then flower, finally producing new leaves, all in one brief process. Traditionally the oak is a sacred tree, associated with kingship, truth, strength and protection.