Joellynn Dwinal

9x14, Acrylic Paint, 2026

  My idea was to add meaning to this picture I took in North Caroline. I took this photo in 2025 in the Appalachian Mountains. My dad had set it as his phone background, so I decided to paint it, but I needed to add meaning. I watched this movie once, and I remember the main character sat in front of a tree and told a girl to look at it. When he asked why, he said because every tree has seen years of everything, every tree has secrets you don't see, so I added a face into the tree to show the 'secrets" and "memories" that the tree holds. 

To paint the background, I used black and Navy blue to make a dark blue for the sky. I did the outer edges in the dark blue and used a lighter blue for the middle; I used a wet brush to blend these. For the stars, I mixed white paint and water, and I used a toothbrush to spray the white paint over the blue, creating the stars. To paint the trees, I used many small brushes and different shades of green, white, yellow, and browns.  To make it more unique, I added little swirls of paint into the bark of the tree.

The artwork means that life doesn't have to be simple, like looking at a tree. I want my audience to think deeper about the secrets or the memories that the tree may hold. The symbolic imagery in this painting is the tree on the left side that has a face painted into it. It was most difficult for me to make the texture on the trees because the paint was not drying fast enough. I overcame this by doing the little swirls so that the colors also got blended well. If I started over, I would have fixed the top trees on the right and also fixed the mistakes I had in the blue. This artwork is surreal, and it's personal to me because I took this photo myself.