A Good Tree Can Lodge Ten Thousand Birds

2025

Jonathan Cooper, Park Walk Gallery, 20 Park Walk, London SW10 0AQ
17th September – 11th October 2025

A    G O O D   T R E E   C A N   L O D G E   T E N   T H O U S A N D   B I R D S

Celebrating the wonder of trees

My new show is a first for me, working in pen and watercolour. This all took root when I travelled to Kenya for a three month art residency in October 2023. Deciding against taking oil paints, apart from anything else, I didn’t like the prospect of bugs getting stuck in wet paint! It was time to try something new. So armed with a pen, paper and watercolours and having fallen in love with the enormous variety of trees, I decided to concentrate on these. On my return I showed them to Jonathan Cooper and this exhibition is the result. There are 30 works including some that were done in Kenya.

Trees have special powers, each adapting to its own environment, for example…

Off the Kenyan coast… Threading through the labyrinth of the mangroves, it was extraordinary to see huge trees flourishing, growing out of the sea. Their aerial roots visible at low tide acting as snorkels absorbing oxygen from the air; essential for the mangroves survival in the water logged soil. They are the coastal guardians, climate warriors against erosion and storms. They support a rich biodiversity including hosting fish nurseries and incredibly store 5 times more carbon than rain forests.

Inland… Seeing the majestic baobab trees, Africa’s tree of life, punctuating the parched landscape. Harbingers of water and when there is none nearby, animals including elephants can eat their bark for moisture. They are also known as the upside down tree, the story handed down by African bushmen, it is said that the god Thora took a dislike to the baobab growing in his garden so he threw it out over the wall of Paradise, and although the tree landed upside-down, it continued to thrive.

Dotted about the East African scrubland, whistling thorns enjoy a harmonious symbiotic relationship with ants. The ants live in the bulbous growths at the base of the thorns, gaining shelter and nectar from the tree, and in return, they aggressively defend the tree against the animals that try to graze on it.

Trees are central our spiritual wellbeing, whether it’s just the physical act of hugging a tree or how they have become prominent metaphors in our stories and myths, the Tree of life, the Tree of Knowledge and in India, more specifically the sacred banyan tree.

They also feature in many proverbs, the most telling is: If you want to be happy for a year, plant a garden; if you want to be happy for life, plant a tree.

This show is a celebration for all trees, real, mythical or just the bonkers from the mind of Edward Lear, “In the land where the bong-tree grows”!

Rebecca Campbell 2025

All works pen and watercolour on paper