Christine Payne was a Birmingham artist, living and working in Wales during the mid-late 20th century. Christine studied art at Birmingham Art College before taking up teaching, then moving to Wales to follow her passion for painting. She lived in Narbearth, Pembrokeshire where she passed away in 2024.

The eight oil on canvas paintings featured on this page are all from a series she produced of Welsh Gnarly Trees. A Gnarly Tree is an old ancient tree best described as Gnarled: Knobbly: Huge: Bent and often Hollow. These characteristics are just as important as the age of the tree but the term is applied specifically to trees that are ancient in years. Ancient trees are those which have reached a great age in comparison with others of the same species.

Many of these ancient trees are steeped in folk law going back thousands of years which is why Christine has included images in her paintings from her imagination of past pagan rituals,many performed by Homo sapiens, our ancestors who arrived about 31,000 BC.

Wales is home to Western Europe’s earliest formal human burial. Bones known as the ‘Red Lady of Paviland’, around 33,000 years old, were found in a sea-cave on the Gower Peninsula tells us that such rituals were taking place much earlier than was originally thought.

Amongst the roots of the trees Christine has painted images from her imagination, representing people, animals and objects from the past.

Many observers have commented that they can see a troubled mind within the paintings, the answer to that is many artists were troubled mentally during their lifetime and often during those periods produced their best work