By Scott Shephard

It may seem odd that when I wondered what I might tell you about this photo of a burled oak tree, I immediately thought of 2 books I read more than I half century ago. They both had a profound influence on how I think and see and therefore on who I am today.

The books were The Agony and the Ecstasy and Lust for Life. They are fictionalized biographies of two of my favorite artists. The first was about Michelangelo and the latter was about the post impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Having read them when I was 11 or 12 years old, I thought that maybe I was a genius, too. My parents bought me paints and paid for oil painting lessons. Sadly, I and my parents were quick to discover that I was no genius and that no masterpieces flowed from brain to brush to canvas.

Nevertheless, artists like Michelangelo, Van Gogh and many others, whose picture books I checked out of the library and studied with a child’s unfiltered curiosity, became part of my very being. It’s clear now that those artists and the lives they led helped spark my life-long interest in art, history and architecture. And there is no doubt that their lives and work certainly shape how I see the world and therefore how I picture it in my photographs.

Thus, when I found this oak tree, rich in textures and colored in subtle earth tones, I right away saw one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings. It’s called “Starry Night” and while the colors are completely different, both Nature and Van Gogh used the same bold brush strokes. You don’t see it? That’s OK. But at least I’ve had you look more close at a lumpy oak tree in a way you probably never had.

Canon R5 1/30 sec f/4.0 400 ISO