Bark

For no particular reason, I saved a piece of bark from Ian's horse chestnut tree. That tree had grown from a conker that he picked up when he was three years old. Over thirty six years, it grew to the height of about forty feet and was clearly bothering one of our next door neighbours. Following heart-wrenching considerations, we decided to have it chopped down.

Back in 2024, I took two or three of the resulting logs I had saved to a skilled woodturner south of Chesterfield and he created two lovely bowls for me which I later presented to Ian on the occasion of his fortieth birthday. That had been my intention all along. I blogged about this here.

Getting back to the piece of bark. It  had sat on one of the book shelves in my study for several months. It had vaguely crossed my mind that I could paint something on it.

I had never shown Ian the bark before. 

At lunchtime today he was preparing to return to London with Zachary when I showed him the bark which had entirely dried out and also stood up stably  on my shelf. I told him of my vague idea about painting something on it and immediately he said, "You could paint a tree!"

Yes! I thought to myself. Yes I could! In fact I could paint something resembling our lost horse chestnut tree. Not a realistic, photographic kind of picture but something more naive than that - as might befit a curled piece of bark.

Late this afternoon, I got out my oil paints and within ninety minutes, I had created this...

And what is more, I am pretty happy with it. It was nice to paint on a natural surface that is not flat. Now I am wishing that I had saved more pieces of bark. But this was the only one and if he wants it  another gift for Ian whose flat in London is, by the way, almost clutter-free. In that respect, he certainly does not take after his father.