“Dappled Oak”: Trusting What You See Over What You Think You Know

Sometimes a scene stays with you long after the moment has passed. Years ago, while on vacation in Oregon's Willamette Valley, I snapped a photograph of a magnificent oak tree arching gracefully over a sun-dappled path. The image lingered in my mind—not because of any profound experience attached to it, but simply because the tree was beautiful. The way its massive trunk and branches swooped overhead felt almost protective, and the patterns of light filtering through the canopy created something worth remembering.

Living in North Carolina, I didn't have the opportunity to return to Oregon and paint this scene plein air. But I kept thinking about that tree, and eventually I knew I needed to paint it. At 16"x20", this would be the largest painting I had attempted at the time, so I approached it with patience and care, spending about 12 to 15 hours building up the layers and working through the challenges.

“Dappled Oak” | 16”x20” | Oil on Canvas

Painting Light, Not Ideas About Light

The biggest lesson this painting taught me was about trust—specifically, trusting what I actually see rather than what my brain tells me I should see. Light has a way of revealing colors that seem impossible until you really look. When sunlight filters through leaves and hits bark, it doesn't create generic browns and greens. It creates vibrant, subtle color shifts that can feel almost unrealistic if you're not paying attention.

I remember second-guessing myself as I mixed colors for the illuminated mossy branches—those greens and yellows felt too saturated, too intense. And the purplish-red undertones I was seeing in the shadowed trunk seemed too dramatic to be real. But I committed to painting what I saw in the reference, even accentuating colors, rather than toning it down to match what I thought tree bark "should" look like.

The result surprised me. Those colors that felt risky actually brought the painting to life in a way that safe, expected browns never could have. The interplay between the warm, glowing greens of the sunlit moss and the cooler, deeper purples and reds in the shadows creates a sense of dimension and vitality. The tree doesn't just sit there—it breathes.

The Drama of Dappled Light

Dappled light is inherently theatrical. It breaks up surfaces into distinct shapes of light and shadow, creating patterns that feel both random and choreographed. The challenge is to honor those patterns without getting lost in them—to paint the shapes faithfully while still maintaining the larger sense of form and structure.

On the path below the tree, the shadows create their own landscape, a network of dark shapes that ground the composition and lead the eye forward. These aren't just "shadows"—they're specific shapes with their own edges, values, and character. Treating them with that specificity helps the light feel real rather than generic.

A Different Kind of Landscape

Most of my work focuses on long-view landscapes—fields, horizons, distant tree lines. This painting gave me a chance to work differently, to zoom in on a single subject and explore it intimately. Instead of capturing a sweep of space, I was capturing the character of one remarkable tree and the quality of light in a specific moment. It felt like painting a portrait. A tree portrait.

There's something humbling about painting a tree that's been alive far longer than you have. Oaks like this one can live for centuries, and their presence feels almost architectural—solid, enduring, graceful. The way this particular oak arches over the path suggests both strength and gentleness, as if it's been sheltering travelers for generations.

Lessons Carried Forward

"Dappled Oak" taught me to be braver with color, to trust observation over assumption, and to remember that sometimes the most vibrant choices are the most truthful ones. It also reminded me that a scene doesn't need to come from a profound moment to be worth painting. Sometimes beauty is enough. Sometimes a tree is just beautiful, and that's reason enough to spend hours trying to capture it.

That oak in the Willamette Valley may be thousands of miles away, but it's here now too—in my studio, on this canvas, still graceful, still dappled with light.

Fine art prints of this piece are available here.