BROKEN BRANCH
Mt. Dickensen White Snag 2019 Acrylic on canvas | 24” x 30” | Sold
Broken Branch from Below 2019 Oil on Canvas |24" x 24"
Broken Branch with Storm Coming 2019 Acrylic on Canvas | 22" x 28" | Sold
Even With Broken Branch, We Look Toward Morning 2020 2020 | Oil on Canvas |18” x 24”
Mt. Dickensen and Broken Branch 2019 Acrylic on Canvas | 2 canvases | 22" x 28" each | Together 22” x 56”
Listening to Broken Branch- A Requiem 2020 Oil on Canvas | 36" x 40" | Sold
Originial Collections
Susan Applegate
February 28th, 2019, arrived with a snowstorm so wet that within a few short hours, sounds of cracking branches could be heard inside the house. A few hours later, electric lines were down and there was no electricity within our area, and the heavy thud and resounding boom of falling trees carried through the otherwise silent air. Driveways were covered with a deep layer of snow that was wet, and overnight had frozen over, leaving a surface more akin to an ice rink than to a driveway. While the electricity at my house was off for a week, others in the area were out of power for two to three weeks as our public utility workers labored to reconnect the lines. The whiteness of snow acted like flood lights inside the house with a brightness I had rarely seen. Inspired by the quality of light as trees and branches fell, I painted this series – not of snow or whiteness, but of broken branches, likening them to the broken bonds between humans and the environment. Our careless pouring of carbon into our atmosphere has created a climate crisis that I knew this freak storm of warmth and freezing, of wet and drought, of opposites occupying the same space and time, was a response.