Many of the paintings above and below are from the Tree Paintings series by American artist Thomas Sayre. Seeking visual expression for the awe he’d felt during a morning hike when sunlight found a grove of birch trees on a snow-covered Colorado mountain peak months before, the artist was drawn to the bark-like burn marks left on the hardwood floors beneath his welding table.
A nearly year-long experiment ensued, applying the wild scattered trails of molten metal unleashed from a 3,000-degree MIG welder unto varous white panels. As with his earlier Smoke series, the artist brought the physicality of a sculptor to the balancing act of capturing random chance, purposefully.