Nathanael A. Miller Nathanael A. Miller

Artist Statement

Statement & Poem

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Did you know that trees make rain? Like lightning, rivers, and lungs, trees flow both ways across the divide between heaven and earth, and they feed the ground where they live and we stand.

These paintings depict the way trees connect heaven and earth by exchanging a river of water flowing skyward (blue) and returning a stream of rich life-sustaining sugar (pink) flowing from the sunburnt crown, through the tree and into the ground.

In these paintings we see trees from the cambium membrane: a single-cell-thick wall that grows trees into a two-way flow between heaven and earth. Retired cambium cells inside draw water from root-tip to crown like a river flowing into the sky, where the leaves “cook it off.” On a 77°F day, leaf temperatures reach 95–104°F, drying so fast that trees don’t just need rain… they create it.
Driven by the light received from heaven, trees take in air and water to make sweet sugar that flows down through the its skin (retired cambium-cells). With that sugar, these majestic beings build themselves. They are built from 95% air and water, just 3–5% from the 9 macronutrients (like nitrogen and potassium), and from >0.5% of the 7 micronutrients (like zinc, copper, and iron). They are also made of >0.1% of 12 trace elements that we don't categorize because we really don’t know what they do.
What we do know is that the sugar that they make out of light, air, and water flows down from the crown, where 50–70% is used for respiration (a tree’s gotta breathe), 30–50% builds new cambium, leaves, and fruit, and 10–20% is poured back into the ground, bringing life to the world around them.

So be like a tree; planted by living water, growing like cambium and flowing between heaven and earth.

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Where does Heaven meet Earth?

Did you ever see a river flowing straight up into the sky?
It flies up in the air, but we're not completely sure why.

Did you see the Sun-burnt leaves that d5raw a skyward flow?
They make rich syrup formed from air and oceans far below.

Slurping on a drinking straw just in the shape of a tree,
They draw water and earth towards a blazing sun.

Drinking in the sky to feed a ring of soldiers, who guard
A gateway between heaven and the treasures hidden below.[NM1]

This ring, a layer, a film of protection made of tiny warriors
fiercely struggling to remain and protecting the flow

This unseen battle is surrounded by heroes of before,
protected without, supported from within, fed from above

Growing, multiplying, stacking and connecting
pouring their wealth, life and connection into heaven and into Earth.