alternative christmas tree by codruta cernea is this year’s fourth tree!
codruta cernea is a very talented bucharest-painter painter and also a friend of mine. today, she used her photoshop skills to do a virtual post card depicting a christmas tree. she made cuts through a stack of papers of different textures and gave the whole thing a 3d look with shadow work. last, but not least, there’s a gif below for our viewing pleasure.
since I was invited to be a part of the alternative christmas tree project, i started thinking about trees. how they have always been silent witnesses of our impermanence and what beautiful snapshots of time passing the trees’ cross-sections are.
hermann hesse insightfully wrote in his book “trees: reflections and poems”:
“nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. when a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured.”
the tree rings patterns, these radial layers of cells that tenaciously grow year after year, were the inspiration for my postcard.
i couldn’t do this in photoshop, i admit it. but i could try to do it in real life, by cutting and superposing several sheets of paper or cardboard. and so could you!
photo credits: codruta cernea
