This particular piece was created from a photo of a female sago palm in our front yard. It was about to burst with seeds, and I wanted to capture what it looked like before the seeds revealed themselves. The felt-like texture on the protective modified leaves is especially cool and the way that the colors shifted when I was layering the image on itself made for some interesting pareidolia.
Grasshopper | Papilio Blues
This piece merges one of the unposted variations that I created from my Grasshopper series (See Variations tab on my site for that collection) and a photo of an iridescent blue butterfly, Papilio ulysses ampelius, that I had from another project to create a patterned mixed work leveraging the contrasting colors from each.
Brugs Leaves | Stilts
This piece stems from a bit of sadness as this was done from a photo of fallen Brugmansia leaves that were out by our greenhouse. Why sadness you ask? Well, most of our Brugmansia throughout the yard were full of hundreds of buds and I was so excited to have so many in bloom when our garden was being filmed for a local PBS show called Central Texas Gardener. This would have been the best bloom that we have had in Texas and out of nowhere we got an abrupt change in weather patterns that lead to temperatures that dropped to 26 degrees Fahrenheit in our area. This caused all of the booms to die and the leaves to drop. I wanted to find a way to memorialize them in some way when I saw these fallen three leaves and decided to use them as the basis of a series of works. You’d think that I would lean towards using the flowers, but the leaves, after a quick freeze took on a very cool spiral effect and that is what sold it for me. I call this one Stilts, as it reminded me of some bizarre creature on stilts.
White Daylily | Celebration
This particular piece is an offshoot of a set of variations that I created from an image of a white daylily in our moon garden. The movement of the petals really lended itself to the type of digital manipulation I use in my images. This particular piece reminded me of a celebration. Although I don’t feel that there is much to celebrate at this moment in time, I saw it as a beacon of hope that there will be something worth celebrating soon. Enjoy!
Ezinne | Blue Contemplation
I have missed working on floral portraits, so I decided to go back to a few that I started several months back, but never completed. This piece is of a co-worker and friend whom I admire a great deal. She has an inner strength, a bold and confident personality and a visibly respected mother’s patience and love, as was evident from meeting her son, an impressive young man. This work was done from one very quick iPhone snapshot that I took during a meeting. I knew when I took it that I didn’t need additional photos, it captured what I’d hoped and I quickly pictured what this would look like as a completed piece, the work below is very close to that initial vision.
Scorpio & Spider
These works were created from a battle between a spider and a scorpion and the spider won. The photo taken of this victory was the basis for these works. The last image is a pairing of the original photo by which all of these images were created. I had planned on posting these images for Halloween as they are on the darker side, but I never got an opportunity to finish them. I was finally able to and you can see the results below.
Oak Leaf | Crisp October
This is another piece created from a photo of an oak leaf on our driveway. The colors that resulted after digital manipulation reminded me of a crisp October day.
Formosa Lily Pods | Regal Puzzle
Like many of my works, this one stems from a simple photo of some formosa lily seed pods that we were collecting seeds from to start in our garden next Spring. I loved the shape of the pods and thought that they would bring interesting shapes to a new work. I enjoy pushing the color of my pieces digitally and seeing what they become and how they can be interpreted so differently by simply changing hues and contrast.
Bronze Baby | Pain Flowers
This particular piece was created from a photo of a bronze sculpture in a museum, but the artists name was not shown, so I can’t give credit there. In any case, I thought it would be interesting to experiment with as I love the expression on it’s face, simultaneously peaceful and yet pained.
Casa Blanca Petals | Bound In Orange
This piece was done from a photo of a few fallen petals from an arrangement that our friends, Torbin & Lynn, gave us. The petals are from a white Asiatic lily, Casa Blanca is the cultivar, and the way they fell on our countertop caused me to stop and take a quick photo as I thought something cool could come out of digitally manipulating them with their curves and withered textures. I enjoy using photos of things that normally would be passed by and using them in my work.
Bouquet Series
This series was created from a photo of a bouquet of flowers that I designed for our dining room table. I decided to use it to see how a very complex and detailed image would work in the way that I manipulate images. The results are below:
Bay of Bengal Denizens | Otherworldly
One of the best memories of my travels was when I visited India with my friend, Anjali and her brother, Manjesh came to Chennai to spend the weekend with us. They shared places with me that I would have never experienced on my own. My favorite memory was the afternoon we spent on the beach in the Bay of Bengal. It was truly an experience that I will never forget. This piece was done from a photo that I took, as the tide went out, of a community of mollusks that had intense red “lips” as it were, so I used this as the base for this piece.
Oak Leaf | In The Pink
This work started as a photo of a fallen oak leaf on our driveway. I digitally manipulated it in Photoshop to create something new and unique. It still has elements that you can detect of the original leaf, but the way the shadows have been altered and the multiple layering of the image has changed the clarity of the image has brought this piece to one with more texture, depth and and unusual color combinations.
Fire Hydrant | Four Directions
I’ve been experimenting with man-made items like buildings and inanimate objects versus the more organic works that I have been creating. This base of this piece was a photo of a rusty fire hydrant that I digitally manipulated to create something quite different and unusual. Let me know what you think. I welcome feedback and love to hear what people think. Thanks much!
Rainbow Wood Experiments
This series of works was created from a photo of a pile of wood with rainbow shades of lichen and moss. I layered and digitally manipulated the imagery, experimenting with color shifting, color levels and filters to arrive at the works that you see below. I really liked the complexity of detail that layering this image created, it reminded me of filigree, sun flares or crackled Renaissance oil paintings.
