Tree of Life

My name is Gabe Garcia, and my piece is titled "Tree of Life." It's a small 12-by-12-inch painting on canvas, framed in a semi-gloss black frame. The subject of this painting is a single black feather with blue and purple iridescence. It is depicted inside a kind of frame, or box, with a rough gray border. The feather is nestled within an organic, smokelike gray form that surrounds it. It is painted in a style I consider realism, but in a thin layer that lets the underpainting show through. The title "Tree of Life" comes from this piece being part of a larger series. My grand idea is to enlarge the feather and have it floating in a desert landscape. I would like to depict this as a night scene, with the feather backlit only by moonlight, so that you might only be able to make out its contour. I envision it as a tree growing out in the desert, symbolizing eternal life. While working on this piece as a study for that bigger painting, I thought and read a lot about the history of the displacement of Indigenous people in the Americas, so at its root, this work has to do with displacement and isolation. Of course, not everything can be conveyed in one piece. I hope you enjoy hearing about this work. Thank you.