The Tree of Paradise 1929

Seraphine Louis made this painting, "The Tree of Paradise," with oil on canvas, and wow, what a trip! Look at all those colors, those leaf shapes—it feels like a hallucination, right? I can just imagine Seraphine, layering and layering, figuring it out as she went along. The trunk of the tree, this furious band of red, seems to be bursting open, the leaves multiplying into infinity. There's a real sense of obsessive detail. The paint looks thick in places, almost sculptural, which gives the whole thing this incredible texture. It’s like she’s building a world from scratch, one brushstroke at a time. The blue eye stares out at you like you are inside of the tree, too. She seems to be in conversation with all the other visionary painters out there. Think Hilma af Klint or Agnes Pelton. Artists like that—they’re showing us new ways of seeing, new ways of feeling. And that’s what painting is all about, isn’t it?