Forest Path (2024) is an oil painting that has successfully prevented and resisted being contained and is an explosion of movement and unsteadiness. The textures and details from all the brushstrokes create guides for the viewer to move from; however, these impasto strokes flow up and down and take us to one spot and then to another- without any grounding. We are brought throughout the entire canvas- yet there is a slight rest in the path until we go upwards towards the rest of the forest where it brings us back to the right side of the composition.
Rather than the work being a peaceful or solitarily still scene- it grasps us with its motion and recreates the actual physicality of a forest onto the canvas without needing to add figures or people to the scene. Due to the activity; it makes it as though the scene is continously shifting and we are not alone as the forest moves with us. The strokes are fast and slice through the path and the work; the forest seems to lean towards us and implores us to take the path. The only relatively still object within this scene is the fallen branch- but even that is falling and thus moving; yet slower than the rest of the scene.
Thus, the falling (or even a bending) tree acts as the ‘spine’ of the work and gives a small amount of stability- yet, as mentioned before, as it is falling- the stability is debatable.