Klimt spent his summers in Litzlberg by the Attersee, chasing light through the forest. The first compilation of his tree paintings is concentrated between 1901 and 1904. Every day at six, he’d set off into the woods, a man so constant he earned the nickname “Waldschrat”— earthy, pithy, mischievous – I understand it means ‘forest goblin’. Maybe it was his beard, perhaps he needed a bath.
Anyway. His early work was as sharp as a photograph, capturing autumn birches ablaze in red and gold, you could see he loved to paint each leaf, each an elegiac tone poem against the dark. Later, his style shifted; he let the light blur into impressionistic strokes and pointillist dots, A sort of surreal light, something that reminds you that nature is both precise and apparently chaotic. And so it goes: in the dance between shadow and sun, Klimt’s canvases are quiet odes to the timeless wonder of the woods.
As a photographer, who lives in the woods, I thought I’d try a homage. Leica glass, wide open apertures, and a slightly cavalier attitude to the clarity slider in photoshop. I don’t often try to blend the boundaries, but I quite like the result. And it’s a fine gambit to spend some time in the company of another spirit captured by the woods.
