The forest doesn't sign its name.
The Forest was doing what it always does: being older than me, quieter than me, more patient than anything I know.
|
|
In 2025, I didn't plan to make a series about signs.
It started with a walk — the kind where you don't decide anything in advance. You just go. The forest was doing what it always does: being older than me, quieter than me, more patient than anything I know.
I stopped because of a crack in the bark. A line that didn't look random. It wasn't a symbol. It wasn't a letter. It was a mark — the kind the forest leaves when it wants to be remembered.
That was the first sign.
It started with a walk — the kind where you don't decide anything in advance. You just go. The forest was doing what it always does: being older than me, quieter than me, more patient than anything I know.
I stopped because of a crack in the bark. A line that didn't look random. It wasn't a symbol. It wasn't a letter. It was a mark — the kind the forest leaves when it wants to be remembered.
That was the first sign.
Forest Sign Graphics #2, 2025, as a standalone piece.
A sign is not a symbol
A symbol is invented. A sign is left.
A symbol means something fixed. A sign means something you have to feel your way into. The forest doesn't explain. It marks — and waits.
Forest Signs began there: with marks that don't translate, only resonate.
Specific trees, real places
Every work in this series is tied to a specific tree I met — in a particular forest, at a particular hour, on a particular day.
The subjects are real. The dialogue is real. Only the language is new.
Each piece is not a portrait of a tree, but its graphic name — built from an abstract sign.
Visual listening
Each sign-name is born not from arbitrary graphics but from meditative observation: the pattern of the bark, the rhythm of the branches, the character of growth. I call it visual listening — and then recording what was heard in a single graphic cipher. This is not style. This is contact.
Each sign-name is born not from arbitrary graphics but from meditative observation: the pattern of the bark, the rhythm of the branches, the character of growth. I call it visual listening — and then recording what was heard in a single graphic cipher. This is not style. This is contact.
Forest Signs Graphic #7-#9 in interior, 2025. Three from the Forest.
A contrast with the canvases
If you know my painterly work, you'll feel the shift. Oil, texture, anthracite, ribbons — a surface that changes with the light.
Forest Signs is laconic, almost scientific. Paper, ink, one gesture.
The contrast is not a departure. It's a range.
What the collector receives
Forest Signs is not a set of pictures. It's a way of seeing that stays with you.
Each work is signed, on paper, one of a kind. Ink doesn't repeat itself — and neither does the hand.
You don't hang it to fill a wall. You hang it because the room finally starts to listen.
If you know my painterly work, you'll feel the shift. Oil, texture, anthracite, ribbons — a surface that changes with the light.
Forest Signs is laconic, almost scientific. Paper, ink, one gesture.
The contrast is not a departure. It's a range.
What the collector receives
Forest Signs is not a set of pictures. It's a way of seeing that stays with you.
Each work is signed, on paper, one of a kind. Ink doesn't repeat itself — and neither does the hand.
You don't hang it to fill a wall. You hang it because the room finally starts to listen.
Forest Signs Graphic #1-#9 in interior, 2025. That's how the Collection begun.
The turn
For a long time, I thought I was making drawings about the forest.
Then I understood: the forest was making them through me. I was only the surface where its signs could settle.
Witches don't take the forest home. We leave something of ourselves there — and carry the rest back in our hands.
Forest Signs is what I carried back.
Exit
If you live with one of these works, you're not owning a drawing. You're keeping a page from a dialogue that is still open.
The more-than-human doesn't need our protection. It needs our attention. It needs a language.
This series is one attempt at that language.
Read it slowly. It doesn't explain itself.
But it will teach you to listen.
The forest doesn't sign its name. It leaves a sign.
For a long time, I thought I was making drawings about the forest.
Then I understood: the forest was making them through me. I was only the surface where its signs could settle.
Witches don't take the forest home. We leave something of ourselves there — and carry the rest back in our hands.
Forest Signs is what I carried back.
Exit
If you live with one of these works, you're not owning a drawing. You're keeping a page from a dialogue that is still open.
The more-than-human doesn't need our protection. It needs our attention. It needs a language.
This series is one attempt at that language.
Read it slowly. It doesn't explain itself.
But it will teach you to listen.
The forest doesn't sign its name. It leaves a sign.