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Plein air painting demands an intense observation of light translated into colors. My interest in a direct visual experience of color led me to use an Italian alabaster ground, which absorbs oil paint easily, creating a matte surface. In the soft foggy morning light there is a stillness. Painting can be seen as a site of meditation or refuge.

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Letting the stream of colors pass like wind through tree branches; capturing under a full moon the memory of a wedding day.

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These pieces were inspired by watching the trees in my yard unfurl their new leaves this spring. The jewelry integrates the ephemeral beauty of natural forms with the permanence of garnets and metals.

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Born in Bellingham Washington in 1925. Fred Reichman was a respected painter with his own unique vision and an inspiring teacher at U.C. Berkeley Extention for over forty years. Curator Robert Flynn Johnson described his paintings as creating a quiet world where everything is covered with several inches of freshly fallen snow. They are deceptively unassuming works that expressed the artist's unending delight in discovering timeless and universal truths in the daily routine of life. His motifs include landscapes, still-lifes and interior scenes, his subject matter: his pets, members of his family, everyday ritual objects such as a favorite teacup, and the creatures both flora and fauna with whom he shared his world for eighty years.

What initially attracts the viewer are the soft variegated hues that dapple the surface of the canvas and the shimmer of a prismatic corona that emanates from the contours of each form. Reichman reminds us that everything in its way is alive and is connected within a universal web of being. The essential message of Reichman's work is that revelation surrounds every moment of our lives. Our challenge is to sharpen our sensibilities and take time to recognize the extraordinary in our everyday existence. His work was exhibited extensively both in the United States and abroad.

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I used bits of branches and leaves from trees outside my home in the Sierra foothills to suggest the edge of a forest, creating a scene that reminds us that over their long lives, trees are silent witnesses to inexplicable, secret events.

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My art comments on the hyper-artificiality of depictions of nature. It brings together the decorative and the endangered aspects of nature through contradictions: natural versus synthetic, mundane versus sublime, and naive versus sophisticated.

Depictions of nature have become clichés. Throughout history and at present, copies of the natural world inundate cultures everywhere. In the interest of understanding, people harness, manipulate, and reproduce the environment. This causes distorted and fractured perspectives, negating the original. The source of my work is these distortions, not nature itself.

I construct a hybrid of digital image, painting, and sculpture. I use web images, digital scans, and my own photos for source material. By pushing pixels around on the computer (like paint on canvas), I render a composite image. Next, I affix an archival, ink-jet print to a holographic foil covered plywood form. I apply iridescent, acrylic paint and holographic glitter. Finally, I coat the image/object in an epoxy-resin shell, like decoupage.

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The dance begins with the first brush stroke informing the next. I strive to maintain the original freshness and zest and then listen to the medium as it dances across the prepared paper or canvas.

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My photo-relief work usually centers around architecture, so this piece is a break from my norm. My art reflects and combines my interests in photography, digital art, and the graphic arts.

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Environmental degradation is a huge concern to me and has been vocalized in my work for as long as I can remember, so that's why it makes perfect sense for me to donate to FUF. I want to support people who are making a difference on the frontlines of this fight.

With this particular piece, I have depicted elements of nature - armored horses and birds - all being drawn to a tree that has had its limbs removed. But the tree is still succeeding—beautiful and growing. Man has intervened, the armored horses are bound to the tree, used as mechanisms of war and the tree has been pruned. The horses are struggling hard to get free, and a hopeful conclusion is that they probably will. The birds flying around the scene are completely free of man's interventions. However, everything is connected in nature and is affected by man directly or indirectly. The tree is a symbol of the resilience of nature.

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Thea Schrack, born on a ranch in Chadron, Nebraska, received a B.F.A. degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1983. Currently a freelance photographer in San Francisco, Ms. Schrack's love and understanding of nature is evident in her work.

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My prints are primarily about shape, texture, and color. For me color is about feeling. Very subtly, color evokes emotions in me as I mix and apply the color, and also as I view the color.

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I grew up a computer nerd and found out early in life that I couldn't draw or paint worth a darn.

Photography always appealed to me because of its unforgiving use of light, color, form, and composition—once captured it is there forever. It represents the chance to find perfection in action. I make photographs by focusing on what is left out of the frame just as much as what is in it, and on manipulating the world by conscious use of exposure, lens, and position. It also satisfies my gadget fetish.

I came out to the Bay Area in 1994, and Ive started 4 companies out here. Some have failed, and some have been wildly successful. These days (and most nights) I'm busting my ass as the founder and CEO of Technorati, a fast growing Internet startup. I'm 38 and a husband and a father of two great kids, ages 7 and 4.

This photograph of Yosemite was made in mid-June 2006 after one of the longest and snowiest winters in memory. My wife and kids had taken a trek to Japan to see family, so I was alone for a few weeks. I spent four days up in Yosemite—to slow down, be alone, and focus on each moment. It was great to get away from the rush of the city, the hustle, meetings, and constant demands on time and energy. I love the act of creation—of bringing a company, a service, a team into being, its challenges and successes, and the knife's-edge balance required to build something great. But it is necessary to get away and explore the other beauty; to slow down, breathe and accept what Yosemite so kindly opened up before me. In this photograph, I tried to bring out the emptiness and beauty and the fleeting moments of perfection that brought me joy.

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Helene Sobol is a San Francisco photographer whose collection "Skin Deep—The Beauty of Bark" explores the cortex of familiar and exotic trees. Her close up focus on color, texture and form reveal fascinating patterns and abstractions.

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My studio practice is an unfolding narrative, involving sustained attention, duration, and ritual. I walk daily in Golden Gate Park. The "everydayness" of this ritual helps me engage recent memory. Over time I notice subtle changes and transient conditions, such as sunlight, fog, wind, and cycles of botanical growth.

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I create abstract, dream-like images out of the simple elements of nature, such as fallen leaves, sticks, or seeds. My photographs are carved out of the unique organic characteristics possessed by the objects, much like a sculptor lets the flaws and veins of a stone guide his chisel. The resulting photographs are two-dimensional "sculptures" of light, form, and texture, which possess an intimate yet mysterious familiarity.

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Some trees have a certain stature and shape that suggests a human gesture. We can feel their presence as having personality, like this manzanita tree, whose branches seem to be raised in joy or terror. It's important to treasure and protect them. Thank you FUF.

The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we do.
—Thornton Wilder

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I use resin to "sample" moments in time and create studies of emotion, thought and memory in a type of conceptual freeze-framing imbued with the symbiotic beauty and mystery of nature and science.

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For many years I have been spending extended periods of time drawing and painting in wild forests of the west from California to Alaska. I am exploring trees as individuals; the other plants and creatures of the forest; the mystery of what happens beneath the ground, way up high, and beyond our sight. I am intrigued by the fleeting light deep in forests, and with the concept of illumination. How might I make work that reveals reverence for place, for forests, for trees?

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I've always loved trees. I found them irresistible to climb as a kid and irresistible to paint as an adult. I paint them a lot. I really should get out and climb them more often.

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The images I paint are very closely related to my dreams, vivid sleeping or half-sleeping experiences that reveal to me highly unfamiliar scenes which I find very inspiring.

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With their soaring heights, distinctive silhouette and majestic presence, the Monterey Cypress exemplifies beauty. "Cypress" is an attempt to visually depict the immediate subconscious response and effect on the human psyche when encountering such beauty.