Shade

This painting is from my Home series where most of the topics and subjects were about my life, my home, interactions with family, friends and pets. Home as a state of mind. Home as in Earth abundant with trees, hills, plants, rocks and all creatures large and small. This series also expressed a completeness that i was feeling and continue to feel. A feeling that i belonged....a feeling that i was home in my skin mentally, emotionally and physically. Shade is about trees as the reason that we have a home. The reason we have a planet that can be a home for us all. The reason we can breathe. The reason we are alive and the reason to feel safe, breathe and rejoice. The tree is an ever giver through its life and even after it dies, it continues selflessly, to give. We breathe, build, burn, carve, create, eat fruit thanks to our generous trees. One tree benefits so many.......Shade symbolizes the fact that we flourish only because of our trees. This tree that is like a mother to us and protects us from the harshness of (the sun) life. Shade was inspired by a huge beautiful banyan tree in my School (Rishi Valley School, Andhra Pradesh, India). This old banyan was our playground in the weekends, We found endless ways to climb it , swing from her dangling roots and play the most fun hide and seek ever. It was under this tree we dancers performed (Bharatanatyam) many magnificent Indian ballets, plays. mimes and poetry. It touched each and every child that passed through this school. I refer to this tree as a she as she always felt like a mother to me, allowing us to play on her ginormous generous lap. We thrived under her shade and even today when she has left for what must be tree heaven, she is remembered with so much love by all who knew her.