Visual Strolls
seasonal residency
Visual Strolls is a residency space for artists who share an affinity for landscapes and wilderness, inner and outer. Foresta is changing with every season as the real forest does. In cyclical circularity it celebrates changing seasons of nature and of our lives. As snow melts away, as days grow longer, as leaves change colour, as they fly with the wind, as stillness settles in, as warmth returns, as birds cross continents — at the turn of each seasonal moment we invite a different artist to bring a new time of the year to Foresta by creating a portrait of time that later becomes part of the permanent Museum of Seasons.
Spring 2023 Artist in Residence
Simona Ciraolo
Simona is an illustrator and an author of picturebooks. She currently lives in London, where the spring - when it comes- is glorious.
Spring 2023 Portrait
“We stop and lie down for a while on the woodland floor, on our backs, not speaking, watching the trees’ gentle movements in the breeze, and the light lacing and lancing from fifty feet or more above us. Where the pollards spread out to form the canopies, I realize I can trace patterns of space running along the edges of each tree’s canopy: the beautiful phenomenon known as ‘crown shyness’ whereby individual forest trees respect each other’s space, leaving slender running gaps between the end of one tree’s outermost leaves and the start of another’s.
Lying there among the trees, despite a learned wariness towards anthropomorphism, I find it hard not to imagine these arboreal relations in terms of tenderness, generosity and even - as Ginny Battson has written - of love: the respectful distance of their shy crowns, the kissing branches that have pleached with one another, the unseen connections forged by root and hyphae between seemingly distant trees. I remember something Louis de Bernières has written about a relationship that endured into old age: ‘we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.’ As someone lucky to live in a long love, I recognize that gradual growing-towards and subterranean intertwining; the things that do not need to be said between us, the unspoken communication.”
“From the clearing, a tree catches my attention. The sun against its trunk looks irresistible, and I’m not one to decline an invitation. A squirrel awaited me out front, not pleased, but courteous nonetheless. Resting my head against the bark I feel the light. At the foot of this tree I recognise home.
The thinnest branches nearly reach the ground, the tips point outward. My gaze follows their lead and I see a crow: it landed on a spot where it knew it’d find food.
Two dogs were there not a moment ago. A long, thin lady gave each of them a treat. It was important that the treats were given right at the same time, so she timed the giving carefully, averting trouble: a quarrel and some crumbs resulted from an earlier distribution.
The dogs walked away as friends, unaware of the crumbs they left behind. The setting sun bounced off their tails like liquid happiness.
A chilly breeze, raising from the ground, excites the ropy branches that surround me. An ancient leaf rustles by my ear. It says that spring is coming, that spring is coming, that spring is coming.”
About Visual Strolls
Visual Strolls is not only an online gallery, an exhibition room, a portrait into the work of the invited artist. It is also a part of our long-term research, understanding arts and creativity as forces that change human states of attention in manifold ways, as forms of cognition and perception, divergent perspectives and poetry of vision, access to intuition and imagination, and empowerment for conscious creation of culture. You can read more about Art into Life research here.
Cover image: Simona Ciraolo