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They are around us
Giving us shelter and shade
Passing beauty
Without a second glance?
I once knew a man.. a long time ago who just loved trees. He spent most of his time driving around in his ole trusty car with a sketchbook. When a tree caught his eyes, he'll stop his car beside the road and start sketching. Sometimes small and fast sketches. But sometimes very elaborate pieces.
My memory fails me with names. I think his name is Mr. Chan. He was a loner. He was one of my fine art lecturers.
He used to be married before and had beautiful girls. But not anymore. He walks with a limp and drives an ole ole car. His car was tired like him.
Most of the students did not actually like his way of teaching. They don't see the sense of going out and sitting in a field sketching and drawing trees. But that's what fine art and field trips are about. A bunch of us were close to him. We were like his daughters, he took us here and there in his trusty ole car to look for things to sketch and many more trees too.
Once he took us back to his house to look at his work. I think he hardly have any guests in his home. He was ashamed of the clutter but we were so amazed by the amount of sketch books all over his house. Paintings everywhere. His whole house was like a big studio. The roof of his house was almost falling over. He had this huge sticks to hold the roof up.
An artist life is almost always very lonely. To produce great work, sometimes they have to keep very lonely lives. Sometimes its not a matter of choice.
I don't know what happen to Mr. Chan since i left college and move to the city. Maybe i'll bump into him again one day. I would love to browse through his sketch books of the trees again. It was really wonderful. An insight into the beauty of the trees.
Each time i pass a tree like the above picture, i am reminded of the great man and his trees. Maybe he wasn't great to many but he left me with deep memories of his beautiful sketches. I can still recall his sketches in my mind.
