Ode to a Tree
Rita, your tree reminds me of Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’. It’s a poem I’ve always liked. The same way I like your picture of a tree. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Your picture of a tree. As though your expertise, talent and control, and vision, were contained in this watercolour; the tip of your brush so finely attuned to the delicate branches, the very tips of the tree, the places where it seems to branch infinitely . . . How could you see, see it just how it was meant to be? The whorl of the branches that curl away from the centre, from the svelte, almost ladylike trunk, into patterns and lines too finely wrought . . .
O Rita, your tree speaks volumes to me about art as an antenna for sadness. An aerial. Hence I think of Sylvia Plath. Her echo. I know you painted it alone; I know you spent a lot of time alone – the tree is singular, alone, in winter, its cloak of leaves surpassed; it looks lonely, despite the three birds that annotate the topmost branches, huddled in. But am I just telling you something about me? What kind of tree? In ‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’ Sylvia Plath concludes ‘the message of the yew tree is blackness – blackness and silence’.
Rita, your tree is not the yew tree. It is silent, but its message is not blackness but light. The tree is spartan. Yet I could look at it forever. You got the temperature of winter just right.
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I wrote the above piece yonks ago for Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist and had been thinking of it lately and of course of Rita’s wonderful tree painting. Look at the real deal here in Te Papa’s collection. I also found these two tribute works by New Zealand artist Collette Fergus…thought I’d share it all for Christmas! Tis the season, etc.
