The start of a shoji screen....I do love trees....guess it comes from living in the desert where they are precious and few...even the old dead ones speak to me...guess that is why most of my trees have no leaves. When I first started painting a lovely teacher told us that she could tell what part of the country you were from by the type of trees you presented in your art...She was dead on! And with individuals from all over the US.....It made me think of the Lollipop trees I would see in children's art at our schools...well in El Paso every spring people would trim their Mulberry trees down to a nub..and when the leaves came out...they did look just like the trees in school art..
My favorite tree was between El Paso,Texas and Orgrande, New Mexico. Lovingly called the Orgrande National Forrest...just one lone tree beside the highway...I loved to see that tree on our trips to the cool mountains of southern New Mexico..My mother just had to get out to see some green...being from Oklahoma...Texas was very brown...and Cloudcroft was the closest place to see green and cool off...We were so very lucky....

So I guess my leafless trees are just a product of my childhood...but they have so much character...makes me happy...love and light...