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A Line Becomes a Branch

A Line Becomes a Branch

By Maggie Tobin

  • First Snow
  • Fog
  • Fontenelle
  • November-Again
  • Reflection
  • The Nightwatch - art by Maggie Tobin
  • Tree Tunnel

I have spent several years drawing trees from observation, studying how their branches twist and turn, reach and retreat, linger… My new paintings are of trees painted from my imagination. A line becomes a branch, then a line again; it spurts, stops, twists, and then breaks. The limbs are sometimes graceful. Other times they are awkward, coarse, entangled gestures. Tension exists in reading the marks as both nature-based and pure abstraction.

The trees are painted in oil on translucent vellum stretched over a mirror, creating a subtle luminous quality and three-dimensional effect. I try to capture the sublime quality of the Hudson River Luminists, as well as the sense of limitless space in twelfth-century Chinese Southern Sung landscapes. Within my paintings there are no cultural references; I aim to reflect the timelessness of nature in a fleeting moment.

Biography

Maggie Tobin

Maggie Tobin was born in Omaha, Nebraska. She has been living and working as an artist, teacher, and community organizer in Brooklyn, New York, for the last twenty years.

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