Notes

"Only when she began to tackle the wind-sculpted forms of the Cape pines which grew on Devil’s Peak did Nita Spilhaus find a theme which offered outlet to her modest personal lyricism; thereafter and throughout her career, trees of all kinds were to provide her most sympathetic subject matter … She [adopted her friend Pieter Wenning’s] distinctive procedures of painting opaque, sombre skies … over a dark, warm imprimatura and pointing up the structure of the composition with the linear accents of gnarled, naked branches."
Esmé Berman