Ogham Series in Progress
When I began the Ogham Tree Alphabet series, I had no clear idea of where it would lead. I knew it was the right project — it brought together so many threads: my Irish ancestry, my love of trees, my years of working through abstraction, and my long search for a geometric vocabulary that felt genuinely mine. But a series of paintings is always a living thing. It changes as you work.
I'm now deep into a planned thirteen paintings, and I want to write about the series as it actually exists today — not as I imagined it at the start.
Birch opened the series small — 8x8", just the trees and the Ogham character. The full language of the series hadn't arrived yet. Mountain Ash, the North American Rowan, followed in the same spare mode — two versions, trees and letter, nothing more. Alder and Willow came next, still finding the vocabulary.
It was with Hawthorn and Ash that everything clicked into place. That's when the birds appeared, and the words — the qualities each tree carries: Purification, Strength. From that point on, each painting holds all of it together: tree, Ogham letter, bird, word.
Live Oak / Dair — Protection and Truth, Bluejay — was a long battle and I think it's the strongest piece in the series so far. Yaupon Holly (Courage, Cardinal) and Hazel (Inspiration, Crane) complete the group of finished paintings.
Several pieces have already been priced and entered into shows. I hope someday to show the entire series intact — but the work belongs out in the world, not stored in a studio waiting for a perfect moment. If pieces sell along the way, so be it.
I have five 24x24" canvases toned and waiting: a new Birch, Apple / Crabapple, and the three paintings still ahead — Elder, Fremont Cottonwood, and Pacific Yew. There's something grounding about having them prepared. The color is already there on each surface, a kind of commitment to what the painting will become.
Apple / Crabapple is next. Love and Trust. I've done two smaller studies and I know what I want now — the 24x24" will be the real painting. After that, Elder and Cottonwood, and then at the end, Yew. Number thirteen deliberately — the death and rebirth tree, the one that closes the wheel. I can't rush toward it. But I know it's waiting.
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