Oak: One Tree, Three Years, Fifty Paintings
By Stephen Taylor
Hardcover, 112 pages ($29.95)
We’ve all seen trees, but probably none of us has looked at any one of them like the author did for a period of three years. Stephen Taylor, a painter and art teacher, spied a 250-year-old oak in the English countryside and decided to depict it at every time of day, in every season, to document its wondrous details and its awe-inspiring, ever-renewing cycles of life. This collection of his paintings, with notes and insights about each, will certainly delight art lovers. But even casual page-turners will find themselves captivated by Taylor’s singular mission, which suggests there’s far more to see—and absorb—from the natural world than most of us ever imagine.