Dinner Party Guest #7: Anna Lee

Photo by Sarah Faith Strong

Here is something that has shifted for me in the Mother Trees project: I was a guest in my own collaboration.

While I am the instigator of all of the Gray Matter Series projects, this one has allowed me to go deeper with my ability to be impacted by others’ creative work, even as I ended up creating the painting I was going to create all along. The journey has been the joy.

Much of this is due to going beyond the fashion angle in order to shift into more of an investigation of how our creative expressions are a way of sharing ourselves as mother trees- wisdom gleaned and important lessons and questions that we ask from our creative inquiries.

The work that is starting to come out of The Arthouse is a new set of experiences for me, and I hope it will be for others as well. More than anything, it has been about learning the art of patience in my creative work and collaborations, that everything IS coming together, we just don’t always get a chance to choose the timing.

Mother Trees Collective Painting by Ms. Anna Lee

Now, about that work of art I made in response to the beautiful dinner: I create multiple-canvas paintings that tell the big-picture stories of the collective impact on the individual, as well as the individual’s contribution to the collective, whether it be community, family, friend group, or just a collection of people who are inspired to acquire their piece of a bigger picture. This 38 piece painting will be for sale at the Studio Crawl this weekend- 25$ and 35$ per piece, and is a lovely gift for yourself or someone you consider to be a Mother Tree in your life.