Hobbits at the Fangorn Forest — Print & Oil Painting

The trees have been painted as anatomy. Every trunk in this wood has shoulders, elbows and knuckles: the roots grip the boulders the way a hand grips, the limbs bend at joints instead of curving, and thick moss lies along the upper surfaces the way cloth lies on a body. The forest is alive well before anything in it moves.

Two figures stand at the centre on pale rock, tiny and dark, no larger than the smallest mark the brush can make. Their job is to be the ruler in the picture, and the moment the eye finds them the trunks on either side become enormous.

The light comes from behind and is losing. Fog fills the space between the trunks and goes to white in the distance, and long strands of moss hang from the branches in vertical threads that catch it, so the back of the wood reads as a curtain rather than as depth.

A stream comes down the centre foreground over wet stones in short broken strokes of white over green-grey, and it is the only movement the painting admits. The palette runs narrow throughout: sap green, grey-green, bone, and nothing else.

This wood is very old and it has an excellent memory for being interfered with. Two small strangers walking into it are not the most dangerous thing present. From our Lord of the Rings collection, beside what the trees here turn out to be.