Staghorn
One of the best known of the North American sumacs is the Staghorn Sumac. It grows from southern Canada to Georgia and Mississippi. It is an attractive flat-topped tree, growing 30 to 35 feet high. The tree bears small, greenish flowers and tiny red berries. Its fernlike leaves are velvety dark green above and pale beneath. In autumn, the leaves turn scarlet, orange and purple. The forked branches of immature trees have a velvety down. The berry clusters and leaf-stalks are hairy.
Matthew Hanna is an intuitive colorist whose heavy application of deeply colored pigment, clotted blood-red on trees and dripping deep-brown down branches, are reminiscent of the Post-impressionists or German expressionists. They also have an illusory Old and New World effect, as if they could easily be seen on stained glass in a European chapel, or in the window of a hot Manhattan gallery in the 1950s. Because of this, there’s a sense of permanence in his abstract scenes. Forget looking at them; you want to live forever in them.
-Rebecca Mazzei
Arts and Culture Editor Metro Times