Sanctuary

Sanctuary ©2022 - At some point in our lives, all of us have the need for a place of refuge from something, whether it’s physical, mental or imagined. Some seek it in religion, some in nature, others through meditation. However you get to this shelter, be it physical or mental, wouldn’t it be comforting to know you could enter a single space, available to all creatures, whenever needed? Such is the nature of this piece. I began with an image I captured of a somewhat broken, bare tree with limbs that seemed to be flailing at a sky filled with menacing, dark clouds. The original foreground was too overgrown so I replaced it with tall grasses and small flowering plants from another image. The amazing crows, sadly often associated in folklore with misfortune and death, have been maligned enough to seek a safe haven from time to time. The ethereal Monarch butterflies, their numbers in decline with loss of habitat and milkweed plants (the only food their caterpillars can eat) could also use a safe place to land. Enter my young heroine. She has the power to shelter them from the approaching storm and other misfortunes. One by one they make their way to her, for beneath her parasol lies the portal where all creatures are welcome to enter the “Sanctuary”.

  

A Matter of Trust

    

A Matter of Trust ©2020 - A road trip in November of 2019 on route 202 just over the border from New Jersey into Pennsylvania yielded a property with an extraordinary bare tree. With it’s huge limbs fanning out and reaching like tentacles for the sky, it became (along with the weather-beaten old barn behind it) the background for this piece. My little falconer (defined as a person who keeps or trains birds of prey) is a carte de visite (or visiting card) from my vintage photo collection and dates from the 1860’s. Most people associate daguerreotypes with that era, but these small cards were albumen silver prints, the first commercial method producing a photographic print on paper from a negative. They became extremely popular and were  commonly traded and collected among friends and visitors during the Civil War years. After some restoration, minor adjustments and coloring, she fit nicely into the composition. Her menagerie consists of a magnificent Andean Condor that I photographed at The Turtleback Zoo in West Orange, NJ and a large venue of black vultures. Oddly, when I photographed them, they were gathered on the roof of a large modern home in a well manicured neighborhood. I thought they looked much more at home on the roof of the old barn and the bare tree limb. The Andean Condor, coming in for a soft landing, is an imposing creature with the longest wingspan of any raptor (10 to 11 ft). As it’s name suggests, they inhabit the Andes Mountain range along the Pacific coast of western South America. These large scavengers, like other vultures, are principally carrion eaters (meaning they eat animals that are already dead). As nature’s clean-up crew, they help keep us safe from contaminates and the environment clean. After bringing all these elements of my composition together, color, texture and select filters were added for the final piece. As the young falconer would probably tell you, a flutter of wings can quicken the heart or soothe the soul; it’s all “A Matter of Trust”.