The Sacred Forest

In The Sacred Forest (acrylic, 2022), Zena Ghossoub tips an ordinary birch grove into rose and gold, so the trees feel less observed than remembered. Bare white trunks stand like calligraphy against the flushed ground, while a sunlit path curls off through dark crimson thicket, pulling you deeper in. The brushwork stays loose and unfinished at the edges, a drip left running, a ridge of paint left standing, the way a line of poetry keeps the breath of its first saying. Light doesn’t fall on this forest so much as rise from inside it, gold showing through the pink like something breathing beneath skin. It’s sacred not because of what it shows, but because of how quietly it insists that color and gesture can still speak.

“At dawn I unite with the breeze
To announce the coming of light…
I drink dew for wine, and hearken to
The voices of the birds…”
  Khalil Gibran