Sun & Shadows. 48″ x 48″, Oil on Wood, © 2017 Cedar Lee
It’s a sunny summer day in the redwood forest. There is a sharp contrast between light and dark throughout the image.
The sunlight illuminates some of the distant tree tops in yellow. In the foreground, but still high above our heads, as we are craning our necks to look straight up into the sky, floats a cluster of rich green leaves.
Some of the leaves are in shadow, a green so dark it’s almost black, while others are brighter, lighter shades of green, catching sunlight from above. The giant tree trunk is blue and purple in shadow, back-lit by the sun. In front of it, leaves sit in a bright patch of sun, shining white and yellow.
The far-away tree tops high in the sky are represented by thousands of tiny shapes, dots of light and color strewn together. It gives a sense of movement, and the twinkling of light as it filters through the many tiny shapes.
The heat of the sun is all outside, above the forest, being captured up there in the sky by the living green network of ancient trees.
This is one of my largest-scale paintings. Each one of this size takes about 4 weeks to complete.
