Abscission is the term for the seasonal shedding of leaves.
I encountered this tree in Winter on a cold crisp day in the beautiful Ashton Court Estate. It caught my eye and held my attention. A bright winters day casting harsh shadows and with brightly illuminated highlights on the branches. I used the sheen of the chine collé to emphasise this.You can’t see the sheen on screen unfortunately, so you’ll have to take my word for it. As with all handprinted work, real life experiences are vastly more beautiful.
This body of work is based on the book by Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree. Trees communicate via mycorrhizal fungi to trade water and other nutrients. Ancient and mature trees nurture their offspring via these networks, as well as trading nutrients between other species. Botanist Simard has spent years working on this theory as part of a wider body of work, discovering what it means for forests, the climate and the wider Anthropocene.