Drawing is at the root of everything
‘Drawing is at the root of everything,’ observed Vincent van Gogh, as evidenced in his fervent daily art practice.[1] This sentiment is clearly shared by the artist Lelia Henry, whose acknowledged influences from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries include Rembrandt (1600-1669), Turner (1775-1851) and van Gogh (1853-1890). She is specifically interested in Dutch landscape drawing from the seventeenth century. Turner has contended that colour is ‘subordinate to drawing’ in the academic tradition.[2] This view is mutually held by Thomas Couture (1815-1879) where he wrote ‘you will see that the art of drawing surpasses everything else; and that the qualities of colour and light are only secondary to it’.[3] Henry has also highlighted ‘I don’t like colour, it is too familiar and tied to reality’; she prefers the objective distance from her subject provided by working in pencil and charcoal.
In ‘Conversations with Trees’ at the Ashford Gallery, Dublin, Lelia Henry sets out to ‘shift our perception’ and look again at the world around us. Her work pays homage to trees and the forest through detailed studies in charcoal that are respectful and compelling. They draw the viewer into the composition with a quiet insistence that there is something important to be seen in this space. We attempt to see trees as the artist has seen them ‘as beings that share something of our own experience’. As Henry observes; ‘each drawing treats the tree as an individual with its own character. Some appear resilient and upright; others lean, twist, or seem to gesture toward each other’.
Trees have often been a subject in their own right art historically. In van Gogh’s drawing ‘Pollard birches’ 1884[4] the trees are the composition’s focus. Although there are two human figures and a small herd of sheep, these are secondary to the group of trees, which the artist has represented faithfully. The birches here are a community and they are gathered closely in a conversational group. This drawing underlines the influence of van Gogh on Henry and her fidelity to nature.
The subject of trees continues to attract the attention of contemporary artists, often to highlight the impact of climate change and deforestation. Laura Ouillon (2022)[5] has extensively researched the tree motif in British art, with particular attention to the work of Mat Collishaw (b.1966), Mark Frith (b.1970) and Tacita Dean (b.1965). In the case of each artist’s work on this subject, they have focused exclusively on individual trees to create ‘tree portraits’; where we are invited to consider the tree in isolation to appreciate its’ wider significance in nature. Drawing is important; obliquely for Collishaw in his representation of the tree as projected apparition in ‘Albion’ (2017); as an additional layer for Dean, where she draws with pencil into her large-scale tree photographs such as ‘Beauty’ (2006); and directly for Frith as he creates ethereal floating trees in pencil emerging from a white void. In every case the artists are working in monochrome to underline the majesty of the trees themselves without the distraction of colour.
The initial inspiration for Henry’s preoccupation with trees was from a residency at Abbeyleix House in 2023. She began working on the series the following year, starting with smaller drawings and working towards an enhanced reflection of scale in her larger pieces. Through the process of naming, Henry has further developed the characterisation of the trees that she has drawn in abstracted portraits. Names are of powerful female figures sourced from Irish mythology, predominantly the Ulster Cycle and this enables us to have a shared vision of the meaning behind the individual trees for the artist. ‘Deichtine’, for example was the mother of the warrior Cúchulainn and a connection point of the mortal and divine worlds. The drawing features a strong, relatively squat oak tree at Enniscoe House, that the artist almost walked past, whose form and curling branches suggests a maternal figure. ‘Scáthach’ meaning ‘Shadow’ was a female warrior and mentor, renowned for training Cúchulainn in combat and prophecy. This drawing is of a wounded and scarred tree. While it is missing branches and a shadow of its former glory, it still stands proud and upright. ‘Bébinn’ meaning woman (bean), sound/melody (binn) and fair (fionn), is a goddess of birth and the underworld and the drawing depicts a soaring tree of impressive stature. ‘Merrows’ from sea (mara) and maid (oigh) is the only pair of trees in the exhibition. They are mermaid sisters and the drawing represents trees from Coole Park; two tall figures with wide conjoined trunks, almost like fishtails, and their sprawling branches are akin to flowing hair. ‘Sidhe’ 2025 points to a mythical figure that hovers between life and death. The drawing references a tree at Enniscoe House where its’ entire insides had rotten away. It was simply a shell but on the branches were green shoots. Other surrounding trees were sending it nutrients. It is ethereal, yet it remains.
The scale of drawings such as ‘Merrows’ 2025, ‘Danú’ 2025, and ‘Sadhbh’ 2025, has been informed by that of the massive trees that could not be drawn on a small piece of paper. “Instead I work on a roll of paper hung ceiling to floor, and I let the drawing fill it”. This suggests a summoning process where the depiction is brought to life with little intervention from the artist, rather than Henry’s scrupulous portrayal in each instance. There is this integral beckoning dimension to these works as the series concluded and solidified with the artist’s attraction to three tall beech trees at Westport House that she imagined as female sorcerers casting spells. Two of these (Danú and Sadhbh) are hung flanking the corner of the gallery to concentrate their sorcery in unison.
The association of trees with humans is evident elsewhere in Irish history, for example in Brehon Laws, their protection was enshrined and they were classified under four headings, nobles of the wood (oak, ash and yew); commoners of the wood (alder, birch and rowan); lower division of the woods (elder and blackthorn); and bushes of the wood (gorse, heather and wild rose). The classification as nobles or commoners, in particular, suggests the human dimension of the tree form. Under Brehon Law, all trees were protected and damage to trees carried a fine due to the tree’s owner. Historically trees in Ireland have been viewed as symbolic, spiritual and curative, and through linking trees individually to important heroines of Irish myth, Henry is underlining this elevated status.
Beyond myth, these drawings are also connected to ecology and Henry has been directly influenced by the research of Canadian forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. Simard has observed that ‘a forest is much more than what you see’ and this acted as a starting point for Henry’s captivation with this subject. The artist has commented that ‘Simard’s discoveries about the intelligence and social behaviour of trees—their ability to communicate, support one another, and even recognise kin—provide the foundation for this series’. They are clearly sentient, remarkably like people, although potentially more considerate. Henry was fascinated to learn that ‘Simard’s work reveals that trees communicate, share nutrients, and cooperate—behaviours once thought to belong only to humans—through underground networks of fungi. Her research suggests that forests are social systems, where individual trees act with an awareness of and care for one another’. Simard sees ‘mother trees’ as central figures in the forest and this fed into Henry’s naming process of the trees that she drew. ‘The works…ask what it means to recognise familiar emotions and gestures in non-human forms….the forest becomes a mirror for human presence — silent but expressive, individual yet collective’.
The concept of the ‘conversation piece’ popular in eighteenth century art springs to mind; this references a scene of a group of figures posed in the landscape or a domestic setting and essentially the artist has created a conversation piece in the gallery where the trees themselves are the figures in character in their respective poses. In this exhibition the conversations with trees occur at several levels, the dialogue began through the conjugate of the artist meticulously making her studies in pencil directly from nature. The trees then speak to each other within and across the gallery; they are grouped according to scale and interactive connection. Furthermore, the drawings are in conversation with the space itself within which they stand; the white of the walls and ceiling vocalising the white of the Fabriano paper and the grey of the shining floor speaking to that of the charcoal within the drawings themselves. It is a multivalent and layered conversation that comes from the trees via the artist to the public. In viewing the exhibition, we are privy to the whispers of history and nature, if we care to listen closely.
Dr Marianne O’Kane Boal
[1] Vincent Van Gogh, Letter to Theo, June 3, 1883, in Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker, Vincent van Gogh – The Letters, First published 2009, Thames and Hudson, London.
[2] ‘Feeling and Nature’ – Notes from Turner’s Lectures, in Art in Theory 1850-1900, ed. C. Harrison, P. Wood and J. Gaiger, Blackwell, 1998, p.108.
[3] Conversations on Art Methods in Art in Theory 1850-1900, ed. C. Harrison, P. Wood and J. Gaiger, Blackwell, 1998, p.615.
[4] Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) ‘Pollard birches’, 1884, Pencil, pen in black ink, on wove paper, 39 x 54 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
[5] L. Ouillon (2022) ‘Forests of the mind: spectres of deforestation in contemporary English aesthetics’, Burlington Contemporary, Issue 6.