When I was a child, my mother created a world of imagination for my sisters and me to play in. We had moved from Australia to a small town in Alabama and she led us on the adventure of discovering the new place we lived in. I came to realize that the moments in life that convey the rich human feelings we all experience are usually the least obvious.
This is a world bursting with the reality that ignores the complexities of our imaginations, dreams, and the natural world surrounding us. By allowing our senses to take over we can question the relationship between our times of awakening and imagination. It is these infinite poetic possibilities that give me the opportunity for creating visual stories by exploring places and bringing together mysterious and fragmented pieces. By searching the shadows of the natural world we may see behind the mask of our learned perceptions. My photographs depict the inexplicable magic and mystery that everyone feels when exploring old, abandoned places, all of which hide secret histories. With years of darkroom experience, I have embraced the digital darkroom, yet I have kept the hands-on approach with my unique mixed media pieces and each fine art print. I have incorporated the art of encaustic into my mixed media pieces. The encaustic process is an ancient technique dating back to the Greeks and involves applying heated beeswax in layers to the art piece.
