Trees in Water

Trees in Water is a diptych exploring perception, mind wandering and the lived experience of dyslexia through two interconnected views of the same image: one expansive and one magnified.

The work began with a photograph of the surface of a local pond in Wandsworth, where the reflections of trees were broken, doubled and continually transformed by the movement of the water. This image became the basis for Diptych I (Macro), initially developed as a graphite-pencil montage over approximately 30 hours before being translated onto a five-foot canvas.

The shifting branches reflected in the water became a visual metaphor for aspects of dyslexic perception. In particular, the instability of the reflected image recalls experiences of visual stress, in which words or letters may appear to move, distort or change position on the page. The image also reflects my own subjective experience of seeing and interpreting the world as a dyslexic artist.

At the same time, the work considers daydreaming, or “mind wandering”. Dyslexic people are sometimes characterised as becoming distracted or looking away when overwhelmed by information. For me, looking out of a window at trees was often part of this experience. Rather than simply representing distraction, however, I understand these moments as a way of stepping back, gathering thoughts and seeing relationships within a wider whole — a process that can also be closely connected with creativity.
In Diptych I (Macro), trees appear simultaneously above and below the waterline, creating a doubling of form through reflection, symmetry, light and darkness. The original montage process similarly involved taking the image apart and reconstructing it, moving between fragmentation and the perception of the whole.

Perspective is important to the work. From close proximity, individual marks, fragments and distortions become prominent; from a distance they coalesce into the larger image. The viewer is therefore encouraged to move around and reposition themselves in relation to the work, reinforcing the idea that perception changes according to one's vantage point.

Diptych II (Micro) developed directly from the first painting. Here, I isolated and enlarged the central plane of Diptych I, transforming a fragment of the original image into another five-foot canvas. What appears at first to be an abstracted detail of reflected trees begins to suggest something else when the image is placed in motion.

When Diptych II (Micro) is digitally rotated at a particular speed as part of a video installation, the image begins to resemble the corneal surface of an eye. The reflected water consequently becomes both landscape and eye: an external environment transformed into a metaphor for internal perception.

The relationship between the two paintings moves between the macro and the micro — from looking outward at the landscape to looking inward at the mechanisms of seeing and thought. The trees, water and eye become interconnected images through which I explore dyslexic perception, visual instability, reflection and the creative possibilities of mind wandering.
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For me, the diptych also concerns transcendence. Experiences that may previously have been framed through stigma, discrimination or deficit are reconsidered here as alternative ways of perceiving, processing and making sense of the world. The work therefore seeks not simply to represent dyslexia, but to reclaim the dyslexic gaze as a creative and potentially liberating way of seeing.
 

 Trees in Water (montage). Graphite pencil on paper. In situ at St Botolphs Without Aldgate Church, City of London. Part of Aldgate in Winter 2021    exhibition: ​       

​   Trees in Water: diptych I (macro). Oil on 150cm square canvas. 2023. 

​   Trees in Water: diptych II (micro). Oil on 150cm square canvas. 2023.

                     Tree in Ripples in Water. A single tree reflected and morphing in turbulence on waters surface. 50x50cm. Graphite on paper. 2024.