claudia bicen's tree stump portraits

Here's the thing, artistic types – you could spend your days filling a bajillion sketch pads with doodles and sketches as you work away at honing your craft, or you could just go directly to the source and create detailed works of art on fallen tree stumps. That's what British painter Claudia Bicen did while holed up at an artist retreat in Mendocino, California, and we have a feeling our forest friends would thank her for it, if they could.

Here's what she had to say about the project: "I spent over a hundred hours meticulously drawing portraits of local people on tree stumps in the forest before leaving them vulnerable to the natural processes of deterioration and decay. Walking the mile-long loop through the redwood forest offered viewers an opportunity to meditate on the transience of all things, including themselves. Since leaving the residency, people on the land covered the pieces with plastic and even removed one portrait from the forest... which points to our deeply rooted desire to attach to things, despite our existence in an ever-changing, impermanent world."

Have a squiz at more of Claudia's work here.