15”x22" Color Photograph, 2023

$835

Red Pine Succumbed presents a dense, close view into the upper limbs of a red pine, where gnarled branches twist and knot under the weight of time and exposure. The tree is no longer living, yet it remains forcefully present. Its limbs contort in every direction, forming a tight, almost impenetrable lattice, each surface roughened and silvered by weather. Cones cling stubbornly to the branches—numerous, intact, and closed—held in place long after the life that produced them has passed.

The color palette is restrained and natural: muted browns, grays, and dull greens of lichen and aged bark. These subdued tones emphasize endurance rather than vitality, suggesting a landscape shaped by wind, cold, and scarcity. The cones, though dry and inert, punctuate the composition with a quiet insistence, repeating across the frame like a record of persistence.

What emerges is a portrait of a tree that has yielded but not released. Even in death, it retains the structures of reproduction, as if resisting erasure. The photograph holds that tension—between collapse and defiance—where the tree’s final gesture is not one of surrender, but of continued holding.