Athrotaxis cupressoides as apparition

This painting conjures the striking skeletal, sculptural and anthropomorphic countenance of an Athrotaxis cupressoides (pencil-pine) encountered in the Tasmanian highlands in a typically rocky and foggy dell close to Lake St. Clair. Most likely a victim of the accelerating fire risk spurred by climate change, the tangled form, as if an apparition in extremis, embedded here in a spookily gothic-like remnant of the ancient Tasmanian landscape, nevertheless evokes the nobility and age-worn grace of this Jurassic-era species.