Tree IV – Green tree in expressive oil painting

Tree IV – Green tree between memory and change

When even a tree loses its certainty

The tree is one of humanity’s oldest symbols. It stands for growth, constancy, life, and rootedness. In Tree IV, this sign is at first clearly recognizable. Trunk, branches, and green crown are present and seem to offer orientation.

At the same time, the depiction appears strangely simplified. The forms recall a drawing anyone could make, and it is precisely this that creates an unexpected tension. What seems familiar slowly begins to detach itself from its fixed meaning.

Green painting between order and dissolution

The bright green treetops define the image and give the work a calm, almost friendly aura. Yet behind this clarity, traces of uncertainty appear. Color areas remain open, lines shift, and individual decisions feel provisional. 

The form remains, while its self-evidence slowly disappears. The tree is not destroyed, but called into question. It remains recognizable and changes at the same time.

Expressive oil painting and symbolic visual language

Like all works in the series, Tree IV was also created in oil. Visible reworkings, spontaneous gestures and different layers of colour remain part of the finished painting. The painting does not strive for perfection. Instead, it makes the process visible.

This places the work somewhere between symbolic imagery, expressive painting, and contemporary art.

Smear board

The Schmiertafel series deals with widely known pictorial signs such as flowers, smileys, trees, or figures. They are simple forms that everyone recognizes and whose meaning seems to be fixed.

In these paintings, the form remains while its execution becomes increasingly uncertain. Color no longer follows the expected paths, decisions become visible, corrections leave new traces. From something familiar, a state emerges between order and dissolution.

The works are about the fragility of simple certainties. They show how even stable signs can lose their self-evidence and how small shifts can open up a new, more open pictorial space.

Original painting by Mark Hellbusch

Tree IV is an original one-of-a-kind work from my studio in Wiesbaden near Frankfurt. Like all works in the series, the painting emerges in an open process between symbol, color, and experimental painting.

Discover more works

Alongside Tree IV, the Schmiertafel series includes numerous other motifs, among them smileys, figures, and flowers. Together they form a body of work that explores familiar signs, visible decisions, and the beauty of the imperfect.

Smear board,

medium formats and

Green paintings

I have been a freelance painter since 1997 and have worked with a wide variety of themes in painting. While until 2007 I was occupied almost exclusively with expressive painting, today my focus lies more on experimental art. My personal background, as well as almost all artistic themes can be found under “About us.”

Studio in Wiesbaden – viewings by appointment.

Direct purchase and shipping also available.