I love this photograph. I was at the beach and in love with the look of this structure, that no longer exists. It was so gnarly and cut up by the water. Just before I was going to take this image my dog Duke (who also no longer exists) but who was always so good about staying by my side, got up and walked into the frame. I called him back but he left his footprints. I remember hesitating thinking, okay I should wait a little till the waves come in and wash them out. It would take 2 sweeps and they would be gone but I didn’t. And it was so cool because, though you can barely see them, it gives me a sense in the photo that something has entered and has left. The photo is also about the relationship between the ocean and cliff and the fact that they are not separate entities at all. They are one and the same. One gets swept over here and one gets pushed over there and we try to make them separate in our minds but there is no separation. Everything is all so connected.

The picture seemed quiet and serene but with a hint of hidden darkness. I was really drawn to the contrast between the cliff and the water. Something so rough plotted against something so smooth resulted in a perfect balance. I wanted to write in a minor key but have uplifting lyrics to balance out the light and dark moods. The song is indicative that some day I will find a woman that I will love limitlessness and in return she will love me the same. . It’s a story of episodes starting with poetry, then traveling, and finally landing on commitment.

For me, this song speaks to the fragility of human relationships, the disposability of devotion and the frail notion of forever. Having just experienced love and the pain of its loss shortly before the conception of this piece, the work comes from a place of melancholic acceptance. In my interpretation, a lake in the distance drains slowly into a empty pool where a woman alone stands, as the water level rises her fate becomes increasingly hinged on how quickly she learns how swim.

For me, this song speaks to the fragility of human relationships, the disposability of devotion and the frail notion of forever. Having just experienced love and the pain of its loss shortly before the conception of this piece, the work comes from a place of melancholic acceptance. In my interpretation, a lake in the distance drains slowly into a empty pool where a woman alone stands, as the water level rises her fate becomes increasingly hinged on how quickly she learns how swim.

This was a song about unrequited love and the pain of being left behind, stuck waiting for this lover that never comes. I thought about the debris life builds up around people. It does so almost tidally until, at the center, at the core, you find yourself stuck in this place surrounded by the debris of your life. The First visual that came to me was of a woman staring out to sea, remembering her lover and sitting in the surf letting herself get consumed by the sand and the waves and the sea. This woman in the center is my grandmother who outlived my grandfather and represents regression and total disconnect from the present. My painting is the emotional landscape of a person. At the core there is this stunted, frozen emotional experience (this person is unable to move on) and then there are the elements around her, which are the debris of time: ature with its sticks and twigs and rawness that continues to build up around the emotional core of this person. In my painting these layers are getting peeled away to reveal heartache.

If I had to sum the photo up in one word I’d say “Domestication.” The subject appears at first to be the woman standing in the pool, but after careful consideration it is not clear that she really is the main subject, since the landscape overwhelms her in physical and possibly emotional terms. It is also difficult to read her facial expression, adding to the impression that she is a prop, a needed vertical element, rather than a fully-fledged human subject. The angle of the shot, with the photographer positioned above the pool/woman, combined with the pool appearing within a mostly natural landscape, led me to think about domestication and domesticity (applied to people and land). Working with the domesticity/domestication concept, I was thinking of ways to incorporate the height differential between the photographer and the woman in the pool. I came up with the idea of using native birds (bird’s-eye view of photographer represented by a hawk compared with smaller (and non-raptor) female quail who is positioned at or below ground level). This refers to the woman in the photo seeming marginalized and the photographer, who I determined to be male, dominating and domesticating her. I also felt this trespassing vibe (that the photographer may have snuck into someone else’s property to take the photo) that I recreated with the birds trespassing on the vacated cat’s home. Ultimately the hawk has left and only the little quail remains.

Description of Olfactory: I imagined the ocean (a brackish, vegetal version) and dry grasses, and chlorine. I wanted to make the perfume on the woodier side and not introduce anything too floral, although there is some tuberose. It’s mostly woods and herbals such as lavender, plus citrus and quite a bit of seaweed absolute. I experimented with a chlorine aspect but decided against it. Overall, I was strongly influenced by the grassy area of the photograph for this fragrance.

If I had to sum the photo up in one word I’d say “Domestication.” The subject appears at first to be the woman standing in the pool, but after careful consideration it is not clear that she really is the main subject, since the landscape overwhelms her in physical and possibly emotional terms. It is also difficult to read her facial expression, adding to the impression that she is a prop, a needed vertical element, rather than a fully-fledged human subject. The angle of the shot, with the photographer positioned above the pool/woman, combined with the pool appearing within a mostly natural landscape, led me to think about domestication and domesticity (applied to people and land). Working with the domesticity/domestication concept, I was thinking of ways to incorporate the height differential between the photographer and the woman in the pool. I came up with the idea of using native birds (bird’s-eye view of photographer represented by a hawk compared with smaller (and non-raptor) female quail who is positioned at or below ground level). This refers to the woman in the photo seeming marginalized and the photographer, who I determined to be male, dominating and domesticating her. I also felt this trespassing vibe (that the photographer may have snuck into someone else’s property to take the photo) that I recreated with the birds trespassing on the vacated cat’s home. Ultimately the hawk has left and only the little quail remains.

Description of Olfactory: I imagined the ocean (a brackish, vegetal version) and dry grasses, and chlorine. I wanted to make the perfume on the woodier side and not introduce anything too floral, although there is some tuberose. It’s mostly woods and herbals such as lavender, plus citrus and quite a bit of seaweed absolute. I experimented with a chlorine aspect but decided against it. Overall, I was strongly influenced by the grassy area of the photograph for this fragrance.

At first I was very confused, but not in a bad way, when I saw the painting. I came back to it every couple of days to focus on different areas of it. I kept discovering new things. The first thing I thought I saw was an eye with its lashes but then it transformed into this wild forest animal with its skin completely ripped off. I was a chef for many years and had the pleasure or displeasure of butchering a lot of different animals. What the image in the painting looked like to me, was the ripped off skin of a game animal ike a deer. There was the raw beauty of the natural scene and beneath it, something much more violent like the hunting of an animal in the forest. In Thorn of the Lily there are many forest elements: Thyme, and Juniper and resin but there is also tons of texture to recreate the experience of walking through the uncut texture of the forest.