The idea behind this series was to subvert the idea of a landscape painting and of portraiture by painting portraits of trees. It was inspired by some vine covered trees I saw on the Martha Brae river in Jamaica that looked like lovers embracing, after which I started to see these anthropomorphic vine covered trees everywhere, taking on the forms of various archetypes. While I was developing these paintings, I was reading The Overstory, and about the social lives of trees, how they communicate and share resources with their communities, Japanese forest bathing practices and how people in hospital rooms facing trees recovered faster. My readings were beginning to blur the boundaries between human/animal and plant, and that is what these paintings aim to do as well.