Roots Magic

Walk through a forest and you'll find a fallen tree with its whole hidden system torn up into the light — intricate, web-like, sprawling like veins of the earth. Eerie and mesmerizing at once. That's the moment this painting holds: the unseen suddenly made visible.

Beneath every tree is a world we never look at, and for as long as people have told stories, that world has been magic. The Brothers Grimm sent their characters into underground realms; children imagine spirits living among the roots. I wanted to paint that — not roots as biology, but roots as folklore, strength, and untold story.

The surface is built up in rich texture and tangled detail, so the eye keeps wandering, never quite settling. This is my nature theme at its most mysterious.

An original painting. Signed.

Jolanta Johnsson