GirlMeetsArt

Acrylic painting of a blue barn © Chris Raymond

Detail of an acrylic painting of a blue barn © Chris Raymond

Big juicy color. Who doesn’t love it? This particular palette is one of my favorites. I used it to paint a somewhat abstracted barn in a weekend workshop taught by Brenda Belfield at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA. Actual size is 36″ x 24″

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. ”