My tree paintings are of people and animals in suburbia. They show the influence Italian and Greek migrants 

had on the built and landscaped environment and its changing form. The tree is regarded as life giving, but 

somehow I’ve managed to make my trees gothic and menacing, due to my personal mark making. This is 

evident in the labyrinth of odd shapes and sharp foliage of the trees. I’m happy with the cacophony of texture, 

colour and light oscillating between a formless mass and a maze of roads leading in every direction. 

I’m interested in the abstract aspect of nature.Some of my friends believe that my pictures are about 

the survival of trees amid human activity. This could be true, but I’d like to say that they reflect human nature 

and our ability to adapt. 

My body of work encapsulates a myriad of organic shapes, abstract shadows and animated dark lines. These 

fragments seem to speak of a deeper reality of the cosmos.

Mark Orwin