“Everything you can imagine is real.” Pablo Picasso
I spent much of my childhood up in trees where I felt hidden, safe and nurtured by their bounteous fruits. Often, I perched for hours at a time among the branches, reading, eating and resting. Up high, I could watch the neighborhood. If scary older kids came near, I huddled deeper into the greenery. If my friends headed to the lake to swim or to sail tiny bark boats down nearby streams, I slid down and joined them.
Recently, I drew twenty-two new drawings featuring people under or aloft in trees doing various activities: climbing a ladder, holding a ball or ceramic plate, pressing tortilla dough, riding in a boat shaped like a banana, meditating, running, or dancing. I often wondered why I drew these scenes. Perhaps, as Picasso implied, they were real to me.
My time in trees proved to be nurturing in both body and soul. While feeling safe, well fed and intellectually inspired by books, I grew physically and in spirit. Resting and day-dreaming were healing and also stimulated creativity. Meditating figures represent the deep repose I found in trees, spiritually connected to nature’s rhythms. I was fortunate to have been taught meditation when I was ten years old. I fell in love with quiet time spent observing my fleeting thoughts and letting them go, finding inner calm.
My creative energies are symbolized by the ceramist with her plate or ball. In other drawings, up in a tree, I feature a tortilla maker, a figure climbing a ladder, or dancers. These activities induce an alpha state of creative synthesis and I’ve enjoyed them throughout my life.
The active figures I drew running or boating might well represent my physical and emotional development. I pursued running as a sport for decades. It’s also a symbol for enthusiastically pursuing a path, such as my art career. Meditating on a boat was an ancient Buddhist image, depicting the spiritual journey of a person traveling to “the other shore,” an enlightened realm, the Pure Land. When I meditate, I sometimes feel transported to a divine space.
All of these visions originated from the healing I found in trees. Picasso was right; these recent twenty-two images sprang from my imagination and yet they proved to be real to me on an inner level.
These drawings can all be viewed at walterwickisergallery.com/kaethe-kauffman-works-2026 through January 6, 2027.
