There is so much more than what meets the eye…

For most of my life, I believed the world was more fixed, structured and stable.

I believed in only what I could see. That there were very firm boundaries around what was real, what was possible. I soaked up what I had been taught and didn’t think to question it.

Then, one day, my mind cracked open. Like, way open.

My spiritual awakening arrived with a bang, changing both my internal and external reality all at once. This shift came crashing in at the same time I was beginning to move away from commercial photography, or at least what had been “business as usual” for me.

As I started to unravel what had been a very limited understanding of consciousness, intuition, creativity, soul energy, the universe and the relationship between all of them, one thing became abundantly clear: we are all so much more interconnected than we realize.

We are so much more interconnected than we realize.

We are energetic beings, connected to each other, to plants, to places, to something larger than ourselves. The forces of intuition, telepathy, past lives, soul memory, synchronicity, frequency and consciousness weave together and take shape in ways that are far more expansive than the rational mind can explain.

Our experience of time through memory, emotion and energy is far less linear than we imagine. Instead, it unfolds through a dynamic interweaving of many threads that are constantly in flux. The human experience is layered, fluid, associative, sensory, energetic and constantly changing, even when we are hell bent on trying to organize it into something simple and structured enough to understand.

This understanding has changed the way I make art, or maybe more accurately, it has become a guide through my art-making process.

What lies beneath the surface?

I am far less interested in recording what appears on the surface and more interested in what lies beneath: the energy of a place or the subconscious impression of a moment. The way a person, a flower, a building, a landscape or an entire city can carry an energy and frequency that is difficult to explain but impossible not to sense.

How does this play out for me through the lens?

Sometimes my art begins in the visible world and stays fairly structured. Sometimes it dissolves into abstraction, repetition, movement, fluidity or layered form. Often, I make something and only after it is finished do I recognize energetic imprints that echo what appears in my own spiritual practice. It is almost as if the deeper meaning develops after the image does.

Creativity and intuition come from the same place.

They are both a current: a wild, shape-shifting energy of sorts. Working with that current asks us to be in a state of receiving, to release control over what comes next and respond only to what is arriving in the now.

That is why I believe making art is a kind of co-creation with something greater than us, with the universe.

And that what we call ordinary may be far more magical than we realize.