Wow, it has been a long time since I was posting anything, so here goes. I spent a year as a volunteer at Rowe Conference Center, in Rowe, Massachusetts from 2014 to 2015, and during that time became obsessed with drawing and painting trees. I had thought, as a writer and an artist who liked to draw portraits, that I would be writing and drawing people but I became obsessed with the unusual trees at Rowe. I was sketching a small tree outside the dining room, and since it was June, the tree was full of leaves and I was pencil sketching, I thought I would be 90 years old, before I could finish each and every one of those leaves! So I began to draw trees daily and realized I would have to learn to watercolor. So I experimented with watercolor pencils, paint, and a variety of media. I sat there in the dining room drawing every bit of spare time I had. Since Rowe is primarily a vegetarian camp, I would occasionally go to Greenfield, about 45 minutes away, to have a burger at Friendlies. So one day, I had just spread out all of my paints, pencils, brushes and water bottles, when a young intern from the kitchen came over and said, “Alyce, we are all going downtown to a restaurant, do you want to come?” Torn, I would have loved to have gone with them, but I also wanted to paint.. So I told her I would like to, but also wanted to paint! After I had been there a while, Felicity, the camp director came over and asked me, after looking at my paintings, why didn’t I apply for the Artist in Residence program for women who haven’t had opportunity to focus full time on their art. I appied, and was accepted. I spent from April 1, 2016 to May 31st, spending most of my time painting..