Trees - My Symbols of Constancy

Dawn Light

Writing something about yourself is always daunting. Feels uncomfortable. No matter how often you have to do it. When the publicist asked for a biography for the upcoming exhibition, cello performance and book launch I set to slightly nervously. Then it occurred to me that it would make the most sense if what I wrote was put into context with the theme of the exhibition. What appeared on the page came as a huge surprise and gave me some profound personal insights that may well resonate with many of you. Enjoy and ponder!

A Life Lived on Six Continents, in Twelve Countries

Ask Mary-Lynne where she comes from and she will tell you that she is a global citizen. The description is apt for through the course of her life she has lived and worked in twelve countries, on six continents, often for prolonged periods of time - a childhood spent in East Africa and motherhood in Jordan; studies in England and her family’s city of origin, Vienna; an early career in journalism and publishing in London and Australia; and latterly a career in art in Cyprus and Spain.

For over twenty-five years, she has been honing her art practice, usually working in series, each time exploring new ideas and experimenting with different materials and different modalities, and for the past five years her creativity has been focused on the theme of trees because it was a tree - an ancient olive tree encountered on the terraces of Ibiza’s campo - that saved her at the end of 2018, after several years of creative barrenness. At the time she wrote:

‘I know I'm not the first, nor will I be the last to have found inspiration in an ancient tree, but when you're in the presence of something that has lived for centuries, and wears its scars with dignity you can only wonder. I knew that I had found my muse…

As I drew I started thinking about the way history has etched itself on this ancient living being, just as our own layered histories leave their marks on us in our passage through time. This tree, though, bears the evidence of its history openly. We, on the other hand, hide ours behind a veneer of normalcy and youth enhancers. The tree, for all its 'imperfections,' is perfect and powerful.’

Perfect Imperfection

When she thinks back over all the many places that she has lived, there is almost always a tree featuring in her mind’s eye. Mango trees and a baobab in her childhood home, palm trees and mangroves along the coast; her apple tree in Dorset; fig trees, lemon trees, olive trees and pomegranates in Jordan and Cyprus - all live vividly in her memory, each serving as a clear marker for a particular home or place.

One of the mango trees growing beside my childhood home in Tanga, East Africa

 She often wonders what it must be like to be deeply rooted to one place, to one community, even with a little bit of envy, but at the end of the day the only thing she knows is to always be the one sitting on the edge, slightly different, slightly apart, almost as though this is her destiny.

It is the land that that grounds her and helps her to feel centred. In the town that she  grew up in East Africa in the 1950s the tarmac ended at the town’s boundaries. After that the roads were dirt tracks, deeply pitted and dusty in the dry season, muddy and often impassable in the wet season. Out of town people had electricity only if they had a generator, and they were used sparingly so as to save fuel. Otherwise they used kerosene or gas lamps. So nights were dark, really dark except when there was a bright full moon, and the sky was a canopy of glittering stars. ‘We were very connected to nature in all its guises,’ she says. ‘I think that this has stood me in good stead throughout my nomadic life because it is by being immersed in the land that I can find my magnetic north, regardless of where I pitch up. Trees have the same effect on me, but meeting that old olive tree was something else - the power she emanated was almost tangible, even from 50 metres away, and the mandate to make work inspired by her was an imperative.’

 At the time she just accepted the decree and was grateful to have a focus for her work. But trees have since become something of an obsession and she has begun to wonder what it is about trees that has such a profound effect on people and why trees play such a significant symbolic role in so many creeds and cultures. Rabindranath Tagore sums it up succinctly when he says, ‘Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.’ It’s a statement that neatly compresses the concept of The World Tree - a symbol that stretches over the aeons and reaches into belief systems from every part of the world, where the tree stands as a pillar supporting the heavens, connecting them both to the terrestrial realm and deep into the underworld.

‘What we now know,’ Mary-Lynne explains, ‘is that this spiritual concept of the tree as standing for the interconnectedness of everything has been found to be a material truth by scientists, who have discovered that trees share chemicals and nutrients and also communicate with each other through their root systems.’

‘The different species of trees all symbolise particular qualities for us. The oak, for example, represents strength and the olive branch that brings peace is a familiar motif. But when I investigated more deeply, I discovered many more layers to the olive tree’s symbolic place in people’s thinking: with its capacity for enduring harsh weather and long periods of drought, it stands for endurance, while the tree’s capacity to survive and grow again even after being burnt puts us in mind of its resilience and hope; its longevity gives us to think of wisdom, for the tree has born witness to so much over the centuries and yet still continues to bless us with fruits and health-giving oil, thus becoming a symbol of fertility and fruitfulness.’

 It seems fitting, then, that this wandering artist intuitively found her muse in an old olive tree, given the nature of the challenges that a nomad faces in life.

The Exhibition is from 11th - 17th November in the chapel at Can Beneit Agroturismo Hotel, Binibona, Mallorca. It features works inspired by encounters with olive trees and is being held to coincide with the annual olive festival that takes place in the village Caimari nearby