Artist Statement

My life has been filled with many blessings. One of the blessings I am most cognizant of and thankful for is the gift of sight, both the physical and the imaginative. My mission at this point in my life is to show my gratitude for this gift by honoring and documenting beauty and what I perceive to be the presence of spirit in all that I encounter. The process of creating photographs for me is about communing with the Divine. Through this dialogue, with camera in hand, I’ve had numerous opportunities to transfer onto film my intimate revelations or sublime moments of spiritual insight. Pure joy is also a major contributing factor in my desire to capture and share wonderful images.

Most recently my creative focus is directed toward further developing five distinct bodies of work. The first of which is The Fleur du Soleil sunflower series. The process of creating the images for this body of work allowed me to meditatively transcend a difficult period of my life while discovering the profound stillness and beauty of the intricate, delicate universe of the sunflower. The last few years of reflecting on stages of relationship while photographing these sunflowers has been quite a healing process that has offered both spiritual and emotional growth.

The second project is Dreamtime, a series of horses. In creating this project I have discovered a level of intimacy, trust and communication with animals I hadn’t previously experienced. After spending a few quiet moments with each horse, these Shunka Wa-Kans (Holy Dogs in Lakota) would seemingly honor my desire for the perfect pose and composition. Each horse seems to intuitively respond to my goals, interacting with me in a way that allowed each one of their spirits to be glimpsed on film.

This third body of work, seventeen years in the making, is the Peace, Prayer Love: A Show of Hands series. Since 1995, while attending a weeklong healing ritual in Senegal, West Africa, I documented praying hands from cultures around the world. In addition to images created while traveling, some of the images in this series were created while attending diverse cultural ceremonies throughout the Southwestern United States. The subjects in this ever-expanding collection range from 6 months to 106 years of age. With each encounter and image created, Spirit reveals itself and continues to inspire my spiritual growth and artistic expression.

The newly developing Spiritscape series which contain images of reflective spirits gracing landscapes, had inspired a new focus for me in 2011. The blending of spirit and landscape creates imagery that both honors the sacred present moment, while simultaneously evoking timelessness. Most of the spirit-figures will appear as de-saturated color forms while the surrounding landscape setting that envelops them remain in black and white, with warm, rich, sepia tones. This series which has taken shape in New Mexico will be expanded with subsequent travels to foreign lands.

Lastly, The Calling All Angels series, contains selected people in everyday situations donning angel wings. This is to make my point that angels in our lives can appear anywhere at anytime whether we recongnize them as such or not. People come and go in our lives and often they bring many gifts, both the of the material variety and most importantly just when needed, in the form of emotional support or inspiration.

I have been blessed to not only create these bodies of work but to share them with an array of people around the world. I am excited about the possibilities and the promise of my work, hoping that it will continue to have a profound emotional and spiritual impact on myself and on the individuals who experience the images. My belief is that as I mature as a spiritual being and an artist, the work will also develop and, to a greater degree, become a creative vehicle for transcending challenging times and for celebrating the beauty, grace, and power of Spirit.. L.F