This work describes the tangled reaching aerial roots engineered to buttress the Ficus tree’s pendulous limbs. My medium is ink stain on heavy Hahnemuhle print paper erased and overdrawn with dynamic charcoal lines.

I always sketch from life and get to know my subject in the process. I also like to work in series, looking more intensely at detail and character as I progress. So has it been with the Ficus trees of the Waverton Peninsula encountered in my local walks. Having read Peter Wohlleben’s “Hidden Life of Trees”, I now consider them as “social beings”, part of a community communicating through their complex root systems, not just alive, but living things.