The Woods - Mixed Media and Photography

The aspen trees near my home in Colorado are stoic muses that often remind me that life can feel both stable and rooted and also impermanent and ever-changing. Beginning in the fall of 2022, I ventured into the woods with my camera and a plan to photograph these muses—to be present with them and to process and try to capture what I was experiencing emotionally at the time.

This frequent journey into the woods evolved into a series of art pieces that I think of as complicated emotional landscapes. The work ranges from representative to abstract, from photographic prints to mixed media to sculpture. Some images are captured in camera, while others are layered, altered, and physically manipulated. All works in this series share a common thread of reflecting the human experience through a seemingly straightforward, but actually quite rich and complex muse, the aspen tree.