The Language of Trees catalogue

The Language of Trees

southern california art projects + exhibitions

The Language of Trees

Featuring

RAPHAËLLE GOETHALS

MARIA GREENSHIELDS-ZIMAN

MILA LIBMAN

KELLEN MEYER

ASTRID PRESTON

CATHERINE RUANE

STACY SOLODKIN

JILL SYKES

March 21 - May 5, 2026

The Language of Trees is a group exhibition featuring eight artists who draw on the depth and serenity of nature to explore a range of truths about human existence and our place within the natural world. In 1997, Canadian forest ecologist Suzanne Simard published groundbreaking research demonstrating that trees are connected and communicate through underground mycorrhizal fungal networks, often referred to as the “wood wide web.”

As we navigate our own increasingly networked lives, what can nature teach us about slowing down and learning through direct observation?

These artists present multiple interpretations of the omnipresence of trees, touching on themes of wisdom, sanctuary, and memory. The rings of a tree keep a record as artists record the world around them. This exhibition invites you to participate in a powerful dialogue, as restorative as sitting against the trunk of a majestic oak.

“When life feels confusing, go sit under a tree and lean against it. The tree will give you answers.”

“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”

John Muir

Listen to the Wind oil on canvas, 18 x 14”

Preston

Maples oil on canvas, 18 x 14”

As the Sun Rises oil on canvas, 18 x 14”

“When life feels confusing, go sit under a tree and lean against it. The tree will give you answers.”

Attributed to Robert Redford

Raphaëlle Goethals

Between the Woods and the Sea encaustic, oil and mineral pigments on birch panel framed in custom fabricated aluminum floater frame, 60 x 60”

I think I will never see a poem as lovely as a tree.

Joyce Kilmer

“And

“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth.”

Canopy of 1,000 Leaves spray paint, graphite and ink on layered vellum, set in acrylic lightbox, 39 x 27 x 4”

Sub-Aqua Series XV

spray paint, charcoal, oil pastel and watercolor pencil on paper with steel sculpture, bamboo and copper wire, mounted and framed, 32 x 24 x 8”

“If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.”

“Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.”

Rabindranath Tagore

Stacy Solodkin

Florence porcelain, 10 x 24 x 25”

Stacy Solodkin

Juliet porcelain, 12 x 9 x 13”

“A forest is more than what you see.”

Suzanne Simard, author of Finding the Mother Tree

Jill Sykes

Birdfarm Ginkgo

metal leaf and oil on panel, 48 x 24”

Jill Sykes

Birdfarm Olive

metal leaf and oil on panel, 48 x 24”

Raphaëlle Goethals

Focusing on painting as a space of exploration, Raphaëlle Goethals has worked with wax, resin and pigments as her signature medium for nearly three decades. She creates enigmatic abstractions utilizing a highly refined mix of hot and cold encaustic techniques uniquely her own. Her complex and meticulous paintings vibrate with a sense of rhythm and lyrical beauty offering viewers a vast range of emotional responses.

Embarking on a conceptually rigorous journey, yet trusting an intuitive sense of rightness and acknowledging the inescapable history of the medium, Goethals is interested in a blurring of boundaries. In opposition to the “tabula rasa’ necessary to the early modernists, her practice is about integration and distillation, and reinvesting the constituents of Painting. At the intersection of the minimal and the expressive, her sensuous surfaces dive into the evolution of consciousness. Drawing from minimalist practice, her paintings are built slowly over time, like strata on the earth. The internalized landscape is reduced to its minimal resonance.

Resisting classification, her paintings neither explain nor deny any representation yet strongly evoke the forces of nature and atmospheric elements; some calling to mind the vast sidereal silence, others a landscape reduced to color, light, and a complex system network woven through the surface. We connect to the layered content the same way we are confronted to a pulsating, interconnected, multi layered world. Goethals work whispers of powerful flows and movements, perhaps alluding to cosmic forces, ocean currents, population displacement or tectonic shifts of all sorts.

Born and raised in Belgium, Raphaëlle Goethals came to the United States in 1981. After graduating from Ecole Le Cinptantecinq in Brussels, she furthered her formal education at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, CA. Attracted to the vastness of the landscape and the quality of light, she relocated to New Mexico in 1994 where she developed her mature painting style.

Through her career she has continued to exhibit in Santa Fe, California, New York, Sun Valley and Dallas. She is represented in distinguished permanent collections in the United States and abroad, including the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, the New Mexico Museum of Fine Art, The Tucson Museum of Art, the Boise Art Museum, the Grace Museum, as well as numerous selective corporate and private collections.

She lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Maria Greenshields-Ziman

Maria Greenshields-Ziman is a multidisciplinary artist whose work focuses on the exploration of organic systems and human intervention with an emphasis on environmental awareness and conservation. She invites a closer look at the world, introducing the notion of layers of perception waiting to be explored. For this reason, she does not limit herself to any particular medium but engages in public art, drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation.

Born in Devonshire, England, Maria completed a Foundation Course at Exeter College of Art and a BA in Sculpture at Wimbledon School of Art, London. She has exhibited at the Palazzo Mora in Venice, Italy, South Africa at the Everard Read Gallery, in the UK at the Glasgow Print Studio, the Royal Society of Wildlife Artists, John Thompson Gallery, and Wimbourne Sculpture Park, the US with Milken Centre, Los Angeles and Context Art Miami.

On Elderberry:

From the “Shadows” series, inspired by shadows cast as the sun moves across the sky or night shadows seen through a window. As if from the inside looking out, these layered works fall over the viewer, capturing the feeling of being completely enveloped by nature, the shadows stretching to touch one another creating a canopy of light and dark.

On Canopy of 1,000 Leaves:

From the “Lightscapes” series: The concept of “available light” in photography speaks to finding the light in an environment and using it to create drama and emotion within the image. By utilizing transparent surfaces as a foundation for her drawings and paintings (plexiglass, repurposed and melted glass, and light boxes), GreenshieldsZiman is able to invoke a sense of serenity and otherworldliness. Light, being an active collaborator and medium, will come into play with the utilization of high-contrast spotlights used in the installation of her work.

Artist Statement

Originally from Minsk, Belarus, I currently live and work in San Jose, CA. Since 2008 my drawings have been based on my photographs of nature. Even though from afar somewhat photorealistic, my work is very minimal and in my mind; merely a series of shapes and patterns. Most of my recent drawings are done with dry pigment and ink on large sheets of paper. Every drawing is based on a composite of several photographs; I combine the images to transform what I’ve seen into something new. My goal is not to imitate reality, but to create reality from within.

Kellen Meyer

Kellen Meyer (b. 1973, Laguna Beach) is an artist, who lives and works in Santa Barbara, California, exploring the intersection between art and ecology.

Meyer’s large-scale fiber installations weave together organic and inorganic materials – including wool, undyed canvas, paper, gems, shells, clay, and driftwood – found in the wild outdoors or sourced from local artisans and fiber sheds. These installations delve into the intricate connection between humanity and other diverse entities, embodying the notion of natureculture as a sphere of coexistence, where her works eventually could compost back into the Earth.

Crafted in her studio overlooking a bird sanctuary, Kellen’s hand-woven works draw from the practice of knitting, crochet, and various weaving techniques to foster stories of interspecies co-evolution, biophilia, and inclusivity.

Astrid Preston was born in Stockholm, Sweden. She received a B.A. in English Literature from UCLA in 1967. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Asia, including solo shows at the Laguna Art Museum, Saginaw Art Museum, Wichita Falls Museum, Ella Sharp Museum and Arts College International. She has had articles and reviews of her work published in the Los Angeles Times, Art in America and ArtForum. Preston received an NEA Fellowship Grant in Painting in 1987 and an artist residency from Lux Art Institute in 2008. Her work is in many public and private collections, including, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Orange County Museum of Art, Long Beach Museum of Art, UCLA Hammer Museum, McNay Art Museum, Oakland Museum and Nevada Museum of Art. She lives and works in Santa Monica, California, where she is represented by the Craig Krull Gallery.

Stockholm-born and Los Angeles-raised and educated, Astrid Preston was first inspired by nature as a child, raised in a home near an apple orchard in Sweden. Her personal pursuit of landscape painting has been a singular and relentless focus. The artist has always examined nature in exquisite detail, beginning from her earliest paintings in the 70’s which, from then until now, have been moved by distant memories, outdoor observation, and the camera’s lens.

Astrid Preston believes “our deepest feelings are reflected in nature.” As a result, her beautifully executed landscape paintings are full of metaphors of our emotions and thoughts. Preston’s work achieves a form of abstraction through a range of skills which derives from realism. Paintings which reveal detailed depictions of gardens reach a visual complexity which, the artist says, “parallel our visual information overload of today”, yet their patterns reflect the natural repetitions in nature and are, ultimately, quieting in their rhythms.

In the act of painting, Astrid Preston is looking for a little “wildness”- something other than the cultivated and the natural. Her compositions tell stories, create moods, and speak of the artist’s inner life as she reveals our outer world in a way we have not seen before.

Astrid Preston has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the U.S. and Asia for over 30 years. She has been awarded an NEA Fellowship Grant in Painting and her work is in many private and museum collections.

Catherine Ruane

Catherine Ruane is an artist based in Southern California. Ruane earned her BA from San Diego State University and her MFA from Otis Art Institute of Art. She was awarded a scholarship to pursue extended study in drawing and printmaking in Florence Italy at Santa Reparata International School of Art. Catherine’s work has been exhibited internationally including; the Villa Donata in Naples Italy, Grafiska Sallskapat Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden, Gallery Antena in Kyoto, Japan, The Palazzo Della Provincia in Frosinone, Italy, as well as in Estonia.

Ruane’s drawings have been included in Museum shows including the Oceanside Museum of Art in Oceanside, CA. the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, CA, The San Luis Obispo Art Museum, San Luis Obispo, CA. Also in California, the Redlands Museum, The Riverside Museum and the University of Arizona Art Museum in Tucson, AZ.

Catherine’s work is included in many private and corporate collections including; CBS Television, Walt Disney CO. Turner Broadcasting Network, Harley Davidson, Lincoln Financial as well as many others.

Artist Statement

Making art is a process akin to studying and note taking. Drawing for me embodies a rhythm much like a repetitive prayer in worship. My studio process is a search into the mysterious border where the physical meets the mystical. I methodically build images as a visual expression of the contrasts between the appearance of natural, wild forms and what they have come to symbolize.

Solodkin

Stacy Solodkin (b. Louisville, Kentucky) is a Los Angeles based ceramic artist who describes herself as an “abstract experimental builder”. Her work explores the expressive potential of form and surface, merging sculptural sensitivity with a refined attention to texture and material nuance. Reviews describe her work as musical like a flow of dance frozen in time, celebrating the essence of nature, impermanence and imperfections. Within her work she embraces the full spectrum of the materials’ expressions as the remnants of a journey taken through fire. Each fold and crack an opening, a map and a mirror for the onlooker. She never covers up the journey but instead honors it as a unique path allowing the work to be itself- fully.

Working primarily in raw porcelain and fiber, she creates pieces that feel both grounded and lyrical, where subtle shifts in contour, finish, and tone evoke a quiet sense of movement and presence. Her practice is rooted in an experimental, intuitive dialogue with material, allowing process and the connection she has with the clay to guide the evolution of each form. Balancing restraint with tactility, Solodkin’s work occupies a space between function and sculpture, elegance and pure joy, inviting close looking and a deeper awareness of the relationship between object, environment, and the human hand.

“The making is the art. The work is an artifact of the journey we took. Each piece holding our history while simultaneously offering space for your thoughts. Eager for conversation”

Stacy Solodkin

Jill Sykes

Artist Statement

We as artists create objects that nourish and enrich existence, and as such what we do, consciously or not, has profound effect. The images I create are about life and the sheltering aspects of Nature – I focus on botanical forms and the abstracted spaces I find between individual branches and leaves. These paintings are sophisticated in terms of color and form, and yet remain incredibly soothing and serene to look at.

Jill Sykes is a painter living in Los Angeles. Her work is included in many private and corporate collections including Omgivning Architecture Interiors, Kelly Wearstler, Kovac Design Studios, Saks Fifth Avenue as well as many others. Her paintings have been featured in exhibitions throughout Southern California and across the country including Tobey C. Moss Gallery in Los Angeles, Museum of Art + History (MOAH) in Lancaster, CA, the Santa Paula Art Museum in Santa Paula, CA, El Camino College Art Gallery in Torrance, CA and The Brand Library and Art Center in Glendale, CA.

southern california art projects + exhibitions

Published on occasion of “The Language of Trees" Exhibition

March 21 - May 5, 2026

Curated by Jeannie Denholm

Catalogue Design by Kathleen Updyke Brown

Exhibition Statement by Jeannie Denholm and Suzanne Walsh

© 2026 SCAPE | southern california art projects + exhibitions

All artwork © copyright by artists

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