This series of six original acrylic paintings is based on photos I took on a recent trip to the redwood forests in Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park in California.
Redwood Forest Paintings by Cedar Lee
In this location, besides the ancient coastal redwood trees, you can also find rhododendrons along the trails, as well as carpets of huge ferns on the forest floor.
The dramatic play between light and shadow is featured in all of these paintings.
“Heart in the Canopy” shows the shape of a heart in the negative space between the treetops.
It’s always fun to find a heart shape when exploring in nature, which we can choose to take as a reminder that love is always surrounding us.
Detail: Heart in the Canopy. 36″ x 12″, Acrylic on Canvas, © 2023 Cedar Lee
The scale is 36″ tall by 12″ wide.
This mockup helps to envision what this painting might look like as part of an elegant room design.
In “Redwoods and Ferns 1,” the foreground is dominated by the trunk of a giant redwood tree.
This tree curves in an interesting way as it reaches so high up into the sky.
The sun peeks through the foliage from the center of the painting, and bright white sunlight softens the edges of the trees with its glow.
The scale is 36″ x 12″.
Mockup of this artwork in an interior space:
“Sunlit Rhododendron” features a beautiful canopy of rhododendron leaves in the undergrowth of the forest, lit up by the sun.
The taller trees in the forest are hinted at in the far distance.
In the intricate details of the beautiful fans of leaves, you can see the veins of the leaves, and the way the light shines through less in spots where leaves overlap each other, so that the image contains a variety of shades of green, from an almost neon yellow to a very dark, deep forest green.
Mockup:
In “Redwoods and Ferns 2,” our eyes are first drawn to the ferns on the forest floor in the foreground.
Then, the perspective of the tall tree trunks zooming up into the sky draws our eyes into the background and up to the top of the painting.
The warm sunlight shining from behind the trees lights up all the foliage in the center of the painting in bright yellow!
Mockup:
“Convergence in the Sky” shows the one-point perspective of many tall, thin tree trunks appearing to converge towards the center as they reach into the sky.
The sun is behind the trees at the top of the canvas, visually obliterating parts of the tree trunks as it shines through the trees.
Because the trees at the top of the painting are back-lit by the sun behind them, they are dark in color, some appearing almost as black silhouettes.
In contrast, the sun is lighting up the tree trunks on the bottom of the painting, so that they appear very light and bright.
Mockup:
In “Towers in the Mist,” a giant dark tree trunk fills the center of the painting, in high contrast against the bright hazy atmosphere filling the rest of the painting.
The tops of the trees are soft green shapes in the fog high above us.
You can feel that the morning mist is going to evaporate from the heat of the day’s bright sunshine.
This painting gives the feeling of breathing the fresh clean air of the forest.
All of these paintings, with their vertical format and medium size, are perfect for filling a spot where you have a tall, narrow wall.
They can also be displayed together in endless configurations.
You can get custom prints of these images in the perfect size to fit your space.
Contact me with any questions about the original paintings or prints.
Looking at these paintings is like looking through windows into the forest, bringing the beauty of nature indoors!
