Emma Coleman-Jones draws trees. In all seasons. In all weathers. Come blazing heat, bitter cold, rain, snow or high winds she will be out in the elements, sketchbook in hand looking for that serendipitous moment in time and place when something catches her eye. It might be a line of willows with their feet in the water during the floods, the shadows cast across the path by the sun filtering through a canopy of beech trees or a sudden burst of winter cherry blossom. Then she will set about drawing, mostly in charcoal, sometimes using coloured chalk and watercolour. Always in situ. Always making the trees the star turn.
And so it is, on a freezing but sunny day just after the recent snow fall, we agree to meet in one of my favourite places to walk in Oxford, University Parks. It’s one of hers too. There are 266 different species of trees in the place, she tells me, a mix of native and exotic, grouped according to genus. And after spending every day here for a whole year recording her responses to the changing landscape, she knows them well.
“I often draw this one,” she says pointing to the huge London plane tree on the North Walk where we begin our outing, now almost completely stripped of its leaves. Well known for the distinct bench that wraps around its huge knobbly trunk, it’s a good place to gather. “If you look at it from this way you get a nice view of the curve in the path. But every tree is interesting in its own way.”
It was her uncle, a farmer, who first sparked her interest in trees, pointing out their different shaped leaves and the meaning behind their names. Emma went on to take academic qualifications in first anthropology, then biology, and after that spent many years in teaching and research before deciding to get some formal training in drawing. John Ruskin is her inspiration, a man who believed that drawing increased our capacity to take the time to look properly at nature. Put this all together and you can see how her life’s journey has informed how she now prefers to spend much of her time.
“I like to be able to identify the species, but I also want to know why it grows in a particular way” she enthuses. “And while I am drawing, people stop and talk to me which is very nice. They might tell me a bit about the tree’s history or its age. And at other times I will get told their personal stories; this is the tree my mother used to sit under; this is the tree my children climbed when they were tiny; this is the tree where we got engaged.”
Trees marking a memory, a time, place and season: I love this idea. Emma points to a group of pine trees to the west of the cricket pavilion. Planted for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 they became affectionately known as the ‘Coronation Clump’, and for Emma they marked the end of the race in her long-distance running days as a student. But the view of them has changed over the time she has been observing them.
“There were six when I drew them in 2020,” she remembers. “All different types of pine, there’s a stone pine there and a Corsican pine among others. Lots of them once had these long trailing branches coming off the side. But they have been progressively cut back for reasons of disease or danger. One of them is now just a stump really.”
And so we continue on. Past the splayed branches of the ‘Pterocarya’ tree, a name from the Greek meaning ‘winged nut’ with its pendulous dangling decorations still dripping with little seeds, swing-shaped like the wings of a pterodactyl.
“Everyone remembers these,” says Emma, “because their children climbed in them. And although you are not supposed to climb the trees in the park, the branches are so low here that even the tiniest of children can scale them safely.”
Right at Havel’s Place, where we find one of eight installations in Europe named after the Czech leader Vaclav Havel of the Velvet Revolution, remembering his work as a peace activist. A lime tree with a moveable seat around it from which Emma can draw from different angles to capture the larger limes planted nearby, the national tree of the Czech Republic and the symbol of truth and honesty.
Down Riverside Walk flanked with willows, and a cathedral of beeches still clinging to their leaves, shiny gold in the sunlight. Then five Hybrid Black Poplars. “I did a picture of them for a lady with five children,” remembers Emma. “In the summer their leaves come cascading down and make a special kind of rustling noise when you stand under them.”
There’s an Oak Walk full of different kinds of oaks and Thorn Walk awash with all manner of hawthorn varieties. Then as we turn into South Walk there are the Tulip trees. “They are so exotic and unexpected when they flower,” remembers Emma as the sun bursts through the clouds. “They are a bright orange and when in leaf huge.” I will be sure to look out for them when the summer returns.
We end our expedition by the oldest purposely planted tree in the park, by the coffee shack on West Walk. A Japanese Pagoda tree from 1880, now fenced off to protect it as it nears the end of its life, with a small sapling replacement alongside. “This is another of my favourites” says Emma. “It’s got this feathery foliage which in the wind has this amazing effect. The leaves completely cover the whole thing so all you can see is the base. Round about September time it has delicate yellow flowers. It is truly beautiful.”
And with that she says her goodbyes and heads off, sketchpad at the ready. She wants to capture the gigantic beech tree we saw earlier with the last of its autumnal leaves shimmering like beaten gold in the dying winter sun.
It’s the sketch at the top of this feature. Exactly as I remember that tree, at a particular moment in its life. As we happened across it on a bright cold afternoon.
A couple of days later I return to The Parks alone and retrace our steps. The weather has turned mild and wet, and I soon find the majestic beech that Emma drew on that day. The branches are now bare, the sodden leaves lying in drifts around its roots. It’s a picture transformed. No less lovely. Just different.
You can contact Emma for prints or commissions via her website:
https://www.emmacoleman-jones.co.uk
All drawings © Emma Coleman-Jones
JANUARY
Crack willows in the floods
FEBRUARY
Pterocarya, or ‘winged nut’
MARCH
Black pines at the Tentorium, where the gardeners keep their tractors and tools.
APRIL
Tulip trees on South Walk
MAY
Oak and Hawthorn
JUNE
London Plane on North Walk. Emma usually draws it from the other direction. But a woman commissioned Emma to draw it coming from east to west as she remembered it on her walk into town from Lady Margaret Hall.
JULY
Beeches and cedars
AUGUST
Lombardy Poplars
SEPTEMBER
Pines with Keble in the background
OCTOBER
Japanese Pagoda tree on a windy day, West Walk
NOVEMBER
Three lime trees
DECEMBER
Scots pines.
Emma at work just after our walk
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Love this Arabella! I did not know about the origins of ‘Coronation Clump’ – great to learn. Beautiful sense of place and Emma is very skilled – I love the plane, beech and tulip tree drawings in particular.
Beautiful drawings by Emma – and always a wonderful read. Love your Oxford sausage posts. It has totally renewed my enjoyment of living in this city. Thank you!
What an amazing project by Emma and so beautifully evoked by Arabella. My daughters, now in their 20s, attended St Anne’s nursery and no expedition to the ‘Nursery Parks’ (they contested the official designation) was complete without a clamber in the ‘Monkey Tree’.
Gorgeous! Sensitive and evocative. Thank you, Emma and Arabella.