Tree of life
Oil painting of tree and flowers © Chris Raymond
In the late 1980s, I attended the Oxbow Art Colony to take a painting class. I had never worked in oils before, and I had a huge mental block about drawing elements of nature. But working in a small studio on a lovely sunny day, with music in the background, I released my internal editor and just started in. Working on paper with a pre-existing texture, I just let my imagination flow from the initial tree trunk into an imaginary “tree of life. ”