Using her imagination, Maria García Orea imbues trees she features in her paintings with magical, fairy-tale qualities. They are unique, after all, adapted to the hot and arid maritime conditions and remaining evergreen throughout the year and able to survive in places where other trees cannot. Not to be compared to palms which technically are not trees but plants. Their trunks, for instance, are not woody and do not have rings.

On the other hand, pine trees have an ancient history and the earliest forms are thought to have originated in the Lebanon and on the Iberian Peninsula. A type quite often seen in the Algarve today is the Maritime Pine with a long bare trunk and an open crown of spreading upward reaching branches, bearing conical cones.

Far more common and much more distinctive, the Stone or Umbrella Pine has a dense crown that spreads out like an umbrella from a branched trunk. The bark is deeply fissured and the large round shiny brown cones contains seeds that take three years to ripen. Of all the nuts that can be collected from various worldwide species of pine trees these are considered to be the most nutritious.

They have a history that spans the Greek and Roman Empires. There is evidence of them packed in soldiers rations and feasted on at lavish banquets. This is another source of inspiration for Maria who often likes to conceive the past whilst standing in the present. “To be in the middle of nature waiting for the sunrise is much more than a painting experience,” she says. She might not picture the scene but often she will feel it.

A huge variety of pine trees are featured in Maria’s paintings growing in Palma, Majorca where she has a studio. Born on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria, at nine years of age she was already certain of the career she wanted to follow. She began attending painting classes and later trained with Spanish master artist, Joaquin Torrents Llado, continuing her studies in Italy. She also has a studio in Madrid where other aspects of her portrait painting have developed.

“The true artist is the one who can convey emotions. I speak with colour and can make colour speak,” she says. A lover of impressionist techniques, she has a special interest in Monet’s water lilies and Klimt’s later landscapes. Her special relationship with trees often leads her to use the curved shapes of their trunks and branches to form a natural border to her compositions.