Roots magic

Drawing roots of a tree is not the easiest task. You have to put your imagination to work. The roots are hidden underground. They are the base of the plant – a support for it, but also and above all a tool for getting food. We know very little about roots. This is hardly surprising. We don’t know them every day. We associate them with a dense, tangled structure. This lack of common knowledge about roots contributes to the fact that roots appear to be something mysterious. There, underground, between the branches of the roots, is a mysterious world. In fairy tales, they are inhabited by creatures invisible to the human eye. Sometimes they are mischievous creatures that make life difficult for people, other times they are good dwarves. What the kingdom beneath the roots looks like – depends only on our imagination. The Brothers Grimm visited underground worlds in their fairy tales. When I walk in the forest, I see fallen trees with their roots uprooted. They partially expose their underground system. The broken branches create an open, yawning wound. Drawing roots of a tree is not pleasant. It will always be a representation of a part of the complex whole that nature has created. However, the richness of the structure encourages and inspires us to transform it into an image that can remind us of the mysterious world of roots.