Diehl turns family trees into an art By Liz Allen
A year ago a friend asked Saundra Diehl to paint her family tree. It was a 70th birthday present for the friend's father.
Diehl, a resident of The Woodlands, pieced together the family's history from tiny scraps of paper.
"She literally snuck into his study and took the pieces of paper from his desk," Diehl said. "She gave them to me and said 'make this into a painting.'"
Diehl brought those scraps of paper to life, turning them into an illustration of the family's history. A scroll bearing the family's names climbs upward along the tree's trunk and winds itself around branches, ending at the top of the tree with the name of the family member last in line.
Now that first creation has blosomed into a business for The Woodlands resident. Diehl's business, Family Tree, is based out of her home, allowing her to spend time with her two young children.
"I realized when I was doing it that this was a niche for me," Diehl said. "I enjoyed it so much."
"I paint when I have time," she said.
That's usually 20-30 hours for each project. Diehl said it takes a lot of time to work on each painting, depending on the number of people involved.
Although it took a friend's suggestion at first, the idea of commemorating a family's life with a painting was a natural for Diehl, whose own family ties are strong, she said.
She's now working on a painting of her mother's family line, which contains the names of 33 first cousins.
"It's a huge tree, because it's so complex," she said.
Her mother's family also is close. Family members gather twice a year, for Christmas and for a picnic in the summer.
Working on her mother's tree has evoked some happy memories, and she hopes her creations do the same for other families.
"I find myself sitting there working on it and it makes me happy, because I see the name and I think of that cousin, and I remember the family reunion 10 years ago where we went down to the creek and looked for crawfish," she said.
The paintings and her work on them also are a picture of sorts of her own devotion to family. Her artistic talents earned her a teaching job at Stony Brook boarding school in Long Island, N.Y., where she lived and taught with her husband, Steven, from 1995 to 1999.
When her second child was born, she knew she personally had to make a choice.
"A colleague said 'Saundra, 10 years from now your students may well have forgotten your name, but your kid's won't. They need you there now,'" she explained. So even though she and her husband had worked together their first 13 years of marriage, she turned her energies toward the home.
Now, with her paintings, she's been able to wed her love of family with her love of art.
The paintings are a symbol of life. She hopes they can help serve as a antidote to the parts of American culture that tend to work against family life.
"We're so fast-paced and so fragmented, and family should be a shelter. I want people to walk into my family and experience peace, and not chaos," she said.
"Painting the trees is just a visual expression that it's important where you came from, and who you're connected to."
The trees in her paintings are typically oaks. Each family member's name is written in calligraphy on a scroll that's attached to a branch. The tree is painted with water colors as is the border around the painting's edge. Diehl says she works with each family to get exactly what they want. Often she researches the family's heritage and includes some of its symbols in the painting's border.
She also includes other pieces of history such as a family crest. "I work with each family and find what they want to commemorate," she said. "It all becomes a little bit symbolic."
Diehl said that's part of what keeps her paintings "fresh."
Each painting costs around $400, but one fetched a price of $2,000 at an auction for The Woodlands Christian Academy and another for $4,700 in a charity auction. One of her newest works is a tree representing the genealogy of Jesus Christ, which she hopes to offer in area book stores and through the Internet.
Diehl said her trees are gifts that siblings might buy together for their parents.
"It's rewarding because it means so much to the people who recieve it," she said. "It doesn't get relegated to a bathroom wall. It's commemorating familis."
So far, Diehl's trees have been mostly oaks. But, she says laughing, "if I knew a families disposition, they might be more suited to a weeping willow."