Johann F. Ulrich - FANTASTIC TREES

Down through the years these huge and primeval vegetative systems have fascinated me as well as occupying many levels of thought. As we have come to learn nowadays, they are more closely related to us than hitherto assumed.

In fact, I consider them to be mammals of sorts. Because like straws dipped into a life-enhancing drink, they draw nourishment from subterranean realms.

In contrast to human beings, their life expectancy is seemingly unending - the oldest living tree known to date being 5400 years old. By comparison we are but ephemeral beings on this planet.

My trees are products of the imagination - visual creations geared to an apparently tree-oriented human species (to get my point, just observe a gymnast's program). Given that they populated this planet long before we came into existence, we are indebted to these living souls for our very origins and our collective survival. They are our ancestors - our fore-mothers and our fore-fathers, as it were.