As I made my way down a hallway at Echo Contemporary Art and rounded a corner, a spectacle came into view: a doorway surrounded by artwork, signs, and an eclectic mix of decorations seemed to burst out into the hall. This is the entrance to Tree’s studio.
Inside, nearly every surface is plastered with artwork. Mostly depicting animals, with some that feature anthropomorphic trees, Tree’s art is a combination of naturism and New Age animalistic symbolism.
“For me nature inspires everything,” explained Tree. “I don’t feel like I belong here, I don’t fit in with human standards. I feel more like an animal, more like nature.” In a world that is focused on consumerism, the more-is-more mindset feels grating to her. Tree is more inclined to walk in the woods instead of walking through a mall.
Nature inspires and nurtures her, and it has been a constant that has helped her grow into her identity as an artist. “I’d be happier in the woods with a creek nearby. It heals me, it keeps me going. It feeds me, it literally gives me air to breathe. It is my god, it is my spiritual passion, my therapy… my everything.”
In her studio, Tree is free. Free to create, to dream, and to heal. On her easel is a canvas that shows a yellow bird emerging into view. Symbolizing rebirth and the reemergence of self, the bright and cheerful colors of this bird feel like hope, while its laser-like focus is indicative of her unwavering drive.
Over the past six years, Tree has used art to celebrate life, to explore her beliefs, and to heal.
Her resilience and fortitude has carried her through a lot of challenging times, including heartbreak which inspired a series of heart-themed works that culminated in one of her anthropomorphic trees. In it, the feminine figure of the tree itself is bent over backwards, surrounded by protective birds. Tree told me that this piece symbolizes the end of her healing journey as she recovered from the betrayal she experienced a year ago.
“Growing up it was easy to get me to behave for art supplies,” said Tree with a laugh. “As I got older I just did it for fun; my generation was taught that art was a hobby not a job so I always looked at it like that.”
Once she reached her late 30s it became apparent that her job was not appreciating her as much, and wouldn’t be able to sustain her long term. She made a choice then to focus on and prioritize her art from that point on. “I was putting all my effort into my job and making it my whole entire life.”
“I just knew that I didn’t have much longer there and I decided I will never work for anyone else again unless it’s art and it’s on my terms.” Over three months, Tree rented her studio, built her website, and finally made it official: she was an artist, and she was going to make it her life’s work.
At first, Tree focused mostly on selling her art at markets around town. She learned a lot, and started crafting a wide selection of accessories because she found that trinkets were often easier to sell than artwork. For two years she was out at markets every weekend, hustling and getting her work in front of as many people as she could. But eventually, the pace began to take a toll on her, and she shifted her focus to developing her fine art.
“I feel like my art has grown a lot. Anything that you do consecutively over and over and over again, you will get better at. This is something I liked enough to do all day every day, so I got better at it. I got my first award, and I’m seeing movement with my art. Art is not something you can get into and be famous the next day. It takes a lot of work.”
Tree explained the work that she completes behind the scenes to support her art career often goes unnoticed, but can take an incredible amount of effort and time. She recalled that when she first started focusing on art, she sent her work to 170 galleries. A lot of her time is devoted to cold calling and cold emailing prospective outlets for her work.
“It was very discouraging,” said Tree. She feels that artists who are just getting started should understand how thankless and discouraging the hidden behind-the-scenes work can be. “You’re going to get 1 million ‘no’s before you get a yes. You have to keep going, you have to want it.”
For Tree, it’s important to maintain a clear connection between her internal world and the artwork she produces. “Anytime I make a painting because I think someone will like it, I end up giving it away because it sits in my studio for four years,” said Tree ruefully. “Anytime I paint from my heart, which is most of my paintings, they sell.” Over the years she has developed a thicker skin and is more capable of handling the rejection and discouragement that often comes from exposing their inner world through art.
“You can’t please everybody all the time, so that’s not what my art is about. I have decided to stop making what I think people will like and instead make what’s on my heart.”
Of course, that desire to create from the heart doesn’t preclude commissions, which she reassured me she certainly can still accommodate.
As for the mediums Tree uses in her work, there’s a bit of everything on her canvases. From pieces composed of rope and ripped up strips of jeans, to crystals and moss, she is fond of experimentation and the sustainable reuse of materials. But the reason she uses discarded objects might surprise you. It’s sentimentality.
“How sad would it be to be a drop of paint left in a bucket that doesn’t get used on a mural?” she wondered aloud. And so Tree rescues those drops, along with scraps or discarded items, and gives them new life in her artwork.
“In a society where everything is so replaceable, and with a button it can be delivered today… the fact that I could take an old dictionary and turn it into a working piece of art, or rescue a piece of old paint that would pollute the earth and transform it into art, that feels like magic. It feels like alchemy. I’m turning trash into gold, literally.”
Despite the rising success of her artwork and the prolific nature of her creation, she can’t deny that sometimes she feels like an outsider here. Originally from Chattanooga, she grew up in Atlanta and still calls it home, but her heart is pulling her elsewhere. Maybe California, or maybe somewhere deep in the woods next to a babbling creek. In both scenarios, her tattoos and knee-length dreadlocks wouldn’t position her as a self-described ‘alien.’
“If I wanted to be normal-normal, I would look normal. I am okay with being different. I know I am a unicorn but I don’t want to be seen as a unicorn with the plague,” she told me. Tree says that here, living in the deep South, she often feels that people interpret her look as indication that she’s into drugs or the like. “When I go certain places, being covered in tattoos and dreadlocks almost to my knees, I’m a unicorn. Out there I’d be a normal Jane.”
Though Tree imagines a future where she feels more accepted in her community, living in a place surrounded by more nature, especially a beach, she says she doesn’t like to spend too much time thinking about the future.
“I have never been big on long term plans,” she told me. “I live every day like next week is never coming. I do what I want, I eat what I want, and I go where I want. I live. I like focusing on the now.”
Recently, Tree has found more acceptance in the art scene here, and won an award for one of her pieces called “Release Beauty.” In it, a lioness is roaring and instead of anger there are butterflies coming out of her mouth. The symbolism in the piece is that a fierce lioness that could tear a person limb from limb chooses to release butterflies as a symbol of hope instead.
Her tag, Lyiness, came from her appreciation of lions as being the top feline in the animal kingdom. You can find that imagery time and again; on the walls of her studio, painted on her truck, and even inked onto her skin.
As Tree continues to develop her artwork and build her career, she hopes to find more outlets for her art both on walls inside of galleries and on walls outside, as she wants to explore working more in murals.
Whatever the future may hold for Tree, there’s one thing that’s for certain. She won’t be singing anyone else’s tune. “If it’s not on my terms, I don’t want to do it,” she said, emphatically. “If it’s not art, I don’t want to do it.”
Keep up with Tree’s work by checking out her Instagram where she often posts about the exhibitions that feature her work as well as open hours at her studio in Echo Contemporary. Her next open studio event will be on March 9 from 6 to 9 p.m.