Tangled Up In Beauty
I’ve always felt a pull toward the wild edges of the world—the places where the air hums with the rustle of leaves, where sunlight dances through petals, and where silence feels like a heartbeat. It’s in nature that I find myself most at home, where the ache in my chest softens into something tender, something alive. For years, I didn’t know how to name that feeling, but it’s been there, steady and persistent, like the roots of an old oak threading through the earth. When I started photographing, I wasn’t chasing that longing—at least, not consciously. I was just drawn to beauty: the curve of a face, the sweep of a flower, the way light could hold both in a single breath. But over time, my camera became a way to reach for something deeper, something I could feel but not yet see.
I’d been taking portraits for years—mostly my daughter's faces that carried stories in their eyes, in the tilt of their mouths. And I’d been photographing nature too—delicate rhododendron petals floating on a lake, fern fronds unfurling in the morning mist, the jagged elegance of a magnolia bloom, tree stumps on a CA lake. At some point, I started blending them on my computer, layering the human and the floral until they became something new. A woman’s profile softened by the translucent sweep of leaves. A pair of eyes peering through a cascade of petals. The images weren’t just composites—they felt like revelations.
