In his studies of abstract painting, Oehlen has not completely abandoned the elements of figurative imagery. Consequently, the elegantly detailed illusory of the "Tree Paintings" is a complex fusion of two opposing pictorial practices, which, when combined, do not antagonize one another, but rather complement the integral visual composition.
Floating within the picture plane, bare and leafless tree trunk with its tangled branches depicted on white ground, next to the blocks of magenta colour gradations is devoid of any of the natural environments found in traditional landscape painting, calling into question the very essence of nature.