Well, you're right, Al. I would indeed label that tree as the outcome
of an oilspill. It's not the worst one I've ever seen, but it's an oil
spill, for certain. In fact, when I saw the picture I was about to
post a deprecating remark to that effect, but you beat me to it.
---
Let me explain why in general, I tend not to like this style.
We've talked a lot on this forum about how trees can tell a story
about their history and the conditions of their growth. To borrow some
examples mentioned recently, a twisted broken base may look strange if
the upper part of the tree is full and spreading in an almost
broom-like manner. What kind of growth conditions could have given
rise to that? Or as another example, lots of deadwood can be glorious
on a gnarled old windswept juniper, but on a swamp tree the same
features seem suspect. Why wouldn't the dead parts have rotted away?
What kind of story does the oil slick nebari tell? Beats the heck out
of me. I've almost never seen a tree in nature that looks like this,
or even one that gives me the same feel I get when looking at a bonsai
with this feature. The only story I can think of that goes with a root
mass like this is that (
with apologies to Jules) a foolish Creator
fashioned trees out of wax, and come the first rays of the
Australian summer the bottom third of each tree melted into a
spreading puddle.
---
OK, then why do people like these trees? I have two guesses.
The first is simple, but inadequate on its own: growing oil-slick
roots is damn hard and takes a relatively long time. And so just
because it's so hard to do, it becomes valued, much as certain
precious metals (worthless as they be for any industrial use) are
valued simply because they're a pain in the butt to go dig up. Or to
put it less gently, these oil slick roots are another symptom of the
Good Ol' American contribution to bonsai, namely, the "mine is bigger
than yours" attitude that gave rise to the popularity of the so-called
sumo style shohin.
---
But I don't think this is the whole story. After all, this explanation
begs the question "Why are oil slick roots in particular valued,
instead of any of the other things that are hard to do?" After all,
it's hard to braid golf balls into cactus stems, but thankfully we don't
call that bonsai (yet).
I think that reason this particular feature has become popular is that
when people see extraordinary masterpieces, they try to emulated
them. And in doing so, they emulate the bad (or at least coincidental)
features of these trees along with the good.
Try growing a beech in shallow pot for a hundred years. You'll get
get one of these oil-slick nebari, I imagine. Pretty much no way
around it.
And then what happens? Then I see a photo of it in Bonsai Today. Or
maybe I'm even lucky enough to see it in person at a show. And when I
see a beech that's been in training for 100 years, I'm typically
pretty darn impressed. The top looks great. It's inevitably in some
amazing antique pot. The bark is to-die-for. People are praising it to
high heaven. It's been styled by some great master. Definitely
something to emulate.
So I go home to my own garden with my own personal collection of
ten-year-old beeches in Korean mica pots. And I try to emulate
that gorgeous tree I saw at the show. I get a better pot. I keep
working on the ramification. I let the bark age....and I try to make
one of those god-awful nebari that I saw at the show. Because I have
failed to distinguish between
the elements of the artistic
composition that made that tree great, and the
necessary
accidents of age that go along with it.
The illusion of age is obviously an important component of the
artistic design. But here we are aiming to create the illusion of an
old natural tree - not the illusion of a tree that has had the
misfortune to spend a century in a bonsai pot and thus has welded
together its entire rootmass into a single unbroken ice rink of a
nebari.
With my best regards,
Old Mister Crow