Apple Tree Portraits

Apple Tree Portraits is a series of digital paintings, created August & September 2022

George’s digital paintings focus on mental wellness by recording the individuality of apple trees and the bountifulness of a living structure, which is helped to produce more through pruning and support structures. Pruning, taking out the excess of our lives, and a little support enables us to live a bountiful life.

For two months in the summer and fall of 2022, George daily took her lawn chair and iPad and walked to her neighbourhood South Osborne Community Orchard to paint. She is a traditional Plein-air oil painter so it was a shift to paint outside with the iPad instead of oils. George recorded leaf flow, clusters of apples, and trunk and branch shapes to make individual portraits of the Goodland, Norkent, Kerr, Sparkle, and the other Zone 3 varieties.

Tasting apples, seeing light change, witnessing shadows tracking the sun, seeing apples grow and colours change over time, feeling the wind, and watching birds, deer, bees, and apple pickers all add to the painting’s joy. “I really needed this self-created mini-artist-retreat for my own health." says George.

One of the calmest places is the South Osborne Commons orchard.