welcome to the fairytale forest




Join me for a walk among ancient mulberry trees and discover buddhas, fairies, wise priestesses, scarefaces with an angel heart, jokers and all sorts of mysterious figures .


The trees look at you, and you look into a mirror.


How do you feel when you see your own force reflected in a trunk? Or your sadness, in a dangling branch ?


Trees tend to live longer than we do, they have seen and heard it all, and yet they keep on renewing themselves, opening up, giving.


They go through the seasons all in their own way. They flourish, they offer us fruit and oxygen and shade, they drop their leaves and thus fertilize the earth that covers the seeds until springtime.


Which image stays with you ?

Do you think it is beautiful ? Or ugly maybe ? And does that really matter ?

The mirror of a tree reflects all that we have inside us, and there is no need for judgment when it comes to that. It is what it is.


Fascinating images invite you to sense your own excitement, mysterious portraits bring up to the riddles in you. Playful images make you feel light-hearted.


What is it you see ? What do you feel ?

You can share it through the guest book if you like. 

And if you're coming to see a Tree views - Arbres démasqués exhibition in person, you can actually write or draw it in the guest book awaiting you there.


be strong, be tender



 Trees, stones, plants, flowers, vegetables and all other aspects of nature willingly show us what we allow ourselves to see. Is it the scenery around us or the world inside us that we see reflected?


There is infinite beauty in nature, and there are myriad discoveries to make if we venture to look into its mirrors.


 The images and their accompanying titles and texts serve as an invitation to go within, see all that may be terrifying and/or beautiful within oneself as it is reflected in nature, to embrace so-called contradictions and be at peace and in oneness. A mix of nature, wit and wisdom.



Van Gogh and Hesse on trees

Vincent van Gogh said: '“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”

Hermann Hesse wrote:







© Herman Hesse.

From Wandering by Herman Hesse. Published by Picador. 1972.

Who is Marion Oprel?

Marion Oprel (1962, Delft, NL) studied in Antwerp and spent 25 years interpreting for the European institutions.


In 2010 health reasons prompted her to move with her family to the region of Montpellier in the South of France.


In the course of her walks with the dogs she grew more familiar with the ancient mulberry trees along the path .


'The villagers say that these trees were planted at the time of Louis XIV, say more than 300 years ago. I do not know if that is so, but in any case, they are impressive.


I started taking pictures of special pieces of bark that resembled animals.


Then one day I was shocked to see a farmer dragging the trunk which I had photographed the day before behind his tractor along the path. He had just eradicated it like that.


My heart missed a beat. And I sensed a strong bond with these magnificent creatures that stay upright longer than we do and that hold up a mirror of growth, blossoming, giving, letting go and passing over.


I literally discovered that mirror too, by the way. I had just taken a picture of a trunk in my garden, fiddled around with the settings on my device and all of a sudden I saw an owl !


The owl was succeeded by a whole range of other mystical figures, of whom you will see a number of portraits here and at any of my exhibitions.


In 2017, my family and I moved to Jávea south of Valencia in Spain. There are less mulberry trees in this region, but there are plenty of olives trees with remarkable expressions, you can find them on my FB page.


I have dedicated a song to my dear mulberry trees. It is called 'Mulberry Mine' and you can find it on iTunes as sung and put to music by the Belgian duo Billy & Bloomfish (Pascale Michiels and Kathleen Vandenhoudt).

All pictures © Marion Oprel, taken on my walks along mulberry trees (with a 19th and 20th century history of silk production), olive trees and vines, with some images of flowers, plants, stones and vegetables from my own garden thrown in.