Creative Guidance

During a period of major transition several years ago, I turned to photography as an unexpected spiritual practice. 

Adapting the lesson of an early Buddhist teaching, author Jack Kornfield wrote, “A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticeable.” This truth was how I came to photography.  

No one escapes grief in this life, and at the time I took a turn with a series of losses and upheavals that left little intact. While the “managing” mind was overcome, intuition knew I needed a bigger container for the transition. In short, I needed a lake.

I took that metaphor and lived it—both literally and figuratively. I spent as much time at the lake (three of them actually) as I could. I sat on rocks and piers. I watched from park benches. I laid on beaches. I walked the trails that skimmed their shorelines. 

And in those hours, their views and sounds filled all the space.

Grief has a disoriented, out-of-body nature to it. I struggled with the physical aspects of life then. I felt disconnected from my own body and actions. But in the presence of that water, this sense evaporated. I evaporated. What remained was pure, enfolding awareness. I slipped unfettered into that open expanse—wholly absorbed by the sensory life and subtle stories around me.

As I chose to revisit and photograph the same areas over the course of months and years, my intimacy with these landscapes deepened. Making pictures became a means to witness cycles of transformation in my own life by studying and framing those around me. 

In the last few years, this practice has lovingly extended into an ongoing creative vision. It's a journey I find even richer as I l apply more technical dexterity to my intuitive process. For me, it's a continual apprenticeship of both skill and spirit. 

From the beginning I've been drawn to photographing wild spaces and natural elements. I've maintained that focus in my work but have also extended into narrative photography. Whether I'm framing a sweeping vista or individual portrait, for me it's always about the quality of my own attentiveness. Can I let go of creative agenda and allow a landscape or person to distinctively reveal something new to me? Can I encounter a person or setting from a place of fascination and reverence? It's an approach I relate to (and retain from) my beginning experiences with photography—letting intimacy be the root of art. 

My work has appeared in Capture Minnesota, Vol. XI, the PhotoPlace Exhibition Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont, the Southeast Center For Photography in Greenville, South Carolina, and A Smith Gallery in Johnson City, Texas.