The Green Gap

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Pine Forest II 1901 Gustav Klimt

We live in a forest. The trees provide enduring inspiration to us on our daily walks and show up often in our paintings. The lush green of their summer leaves usually proves to be the most difficult subject. So much green! Their skeletal architecture in winter or their showy colors in autumn are easier subjects, but the green of summer always challenges.

Peter Wohlleben’s book, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate_Discoveries from a Secret World, examines and explains the most prevalent color in the plant world. He writes that the chlorophyll which helps leaves to process light, converting it, along with carbon dioxide and water, into sugars and cellulose, has what is called a “green gap”. It reflects the color green back and does not absorb it. That’s why leaves appear green. It is essentially the unusable light (for them) in the color spectrum.

Wohlleben maintains that it is because o…