March Calendar
The March desktop calendar has arrived!
March is here and that means that spring is right around the corner! I can’t wait until the cactus are in bloom with all of their colors! Cylindropuntia Acanthocarpa, more commonly known as, Buckhorn Chollas are all over the desert here in Arizona as well as Southern California and Southern Nevada. They are currently bursting with magenta leaves bringing a magnificent pop of color to the Arizona desert.
I hope that you will enjoy the beauty of the Buckhorn Cholla this month!
How to Download
Save the image to your desktop by right-clicking and saving the image, or clicking and dragging the image to your desktop.
Crepuscular Rays
“The secret to a good morning is to watch the sunrise with an open heart.”
Crepuscular Rays/Intimate Abstrations
An abstract photograph of a ranunculus.
I am not a morning person, I love to stay in my bed all warm and snuggled up. Especially during the winter when the sun isn’t even up before I have to get up to get the kids up for school. I do enjoy that in the winter we get to watch the sunrise at breakfast. The kids and I sit at the table and watch the sky change from being dark to purple, light pink, and orange, and finally the golden glow of the sunlight making its way to greet you in the morning. Once the sun has started to rise it wakes everyone up a little more and
So, I present to you Crepuscular Rays, my interpretation of a sunrise via a ranunculus. This photograph gives me the feeling that I get when I am up watching the sun come up oh so early in the morning. I love that the feeling of sunrise can be felt throughout the day.
My Influences - Georgia O'Keeffe
One of my favorite artists Georgia O'Keeffe.
“Someone else’s vision will never be as good as your own vision of yourself. Live and die with it ‘cause in the end, it’s all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened to myself.
”
Abstraction White Rose, 1927/Georgia O’Keeffe
Many years ago, when I was an undergrad, I took a women's study art history class that featured many wonderful female artists. This is where I remember having an in-depth introduction to Georgia O'Keeffe's work. Little did I realize how heavily she would influence my work in graduate school!
Georgia said, “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things that I had no words for.” This was how I felt! I was a new graduate student, trying to find my subject, while living in San Francisco and I felt lost. When I started photographing flowers I found that I feel the same way about being able to express myself through shapes and color. I found that to be super inspirational! There I was photographing flowers up-close with my macro lens, discovering a distinctly unique world that you would never see when just viewing flowers from a distance.
I could quote Georgia over, and over, and obviously will, but she had so many things to say that just resonate with me toward my work. Talking about a flower she said, “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.”
Each and every time I look into her work and hear her quotes about her work I think, yes, she really knew what she was talking about!
One of the things I learned in studying Georgia O’Keeffe’s large paintings of abstract flowers was that it allowed viewers to look at her subject of flowers in a different way. Each of her paintings gives you a new and intriguing perspective on what a flower can look like when you take a deep look within.
This work has been a huge inspiration to just stop and look closer at what you are choosing to create as an artist. Working through the lens of the camera, and moving back and forth to find just what I want to capture, is not fast work, it is an enjoyable, slow-paced work that takes me into a different world!
Red Canna, 1923/Georgia O’Keeffe
February Calendar
The February desktop calendar has arrived!
Happy February!
Another month has flown by and it is time to change up your desktop wallpaper!
How to Download
Save the image to your desktop by right-clicking and saving the image, or clicking and dragging.
All About a Canvas Gallery Wrap
Have you ever wondered about what a canvas gallery wrap looks like?
Viridian Skies/A Garden Variety
Photo Credit: Anne
Have you wondered what canvas gallery wraps look like? I am a visual person and so I thought it might help to see a more detailed set up to show you just one of options that you have when ordering images.
Canvas gallery wraps are one of my favorite ways, but obviously I love them all, to display my work. I love these because the image is lifted away from the wall, giving it depth, and having no frame it allows the image to go right to the edge.
Canvas gallery wraps are printed on premium archival white poly-cotton blend matte canvas and wrapped around a 1.5” stretcher bar, and the back is finished with thick black paper. Canvas gallery wraps are ready to hang -- images sized 16x24 and smaller will have a saw tooth hanger, shown last image, and 20x30 and larger will have a wire hanger, shown in the second to last image.
January Calendar
New desktop calendars for the new year!
Happy 2022!!
A little something new! This year I wanted to add monthly downloadable calendars for your computer! Be sure to check back every month for your new calendar. Subscribe to my mailing list, linked below, and get the new calendar reminder sent straight to your email.
How to Download
Save the image to your desktop by right-clicking and saving the image, or clicking and dragging.
Christmas Postcard
A Christmas postcard for you to share with your friends.
Happy holidays, my friends, with Christmas coming up we have a free downloadable postcard for you to share with your loved ones!
How to Download
Save the image to your cell phone or to your desktop by holding and clicking, right-clicking, or clicking and dragging.
Share the love by attaching the postcard to an email, text message, or other communication.
Saguaro National Park
Our trip to Saguaro National Park
What is on your list of places and things to do? Think of one of those things that you always want to do, no matter how many times you make a new list of things, but that one thing is always there that you want to do? One of my top things is going to the National Parks, the dream is to get to them all but one step at a time, I dream of just be standing in and amongst all the glory that is nature and that has been set aside so that this beauty is preserved for all to see.
Well, last weekend my husband, Bryce, and I went to Tucson, Arizona on an adventure and because I have been talking about wanting to go to Saguaro National Park forever, we spent the afternoon hiking, taking pictures, and becoming park members! (So all the parks within driving distance watch out because here we come!)
We didn’t have as long to spend at Saguaro National Park as I would have liked but since it is only a couple of hours away I certainly plan on going back before it starts to heat up again. This was the perfect time of year to go where we could walk around and enjoy being completely surrounded by nature. Walking the path where there wasn’t another voice around and you could just hear the wind and feel the sun on your back.
There is so much to see and so much to learn about the park and the saguaro, in general, that this time around I just soaked up the beauty of the park. When we got home my daughter, Violet, shared some fun facts from her class last year.
Fun facts:
Saguaros live to be around 125-175 years old
Saguaros start to produce flowers around 35 years old
The arms of saguaros generally start to grow around the age of 50-70
So, where is that place you dream of going to? I would love to add more places to go to my long list of places I want to travel.
Bryce and I at Saguaro National Park
We are easily amused!
Growing
Just like a plant we need to give ourselves time and water to grow. So I asked myself, what areas of life could use some watering?
Working at the computer can be rather sedentary so I decided that I would make a goal of walking 9000 steps a day, which is around 4 miles, just to get myself up and moving around. So far I have made it 18 days straight, and so even if it means walking up and down the hall right before bed, I do it because I have decided that I don’t want to mess that up. This is just one small way that I can “water” and give myself time to grow, both my mind and body. Because I decided to take myself on this journey I have gotten to take walks with friends, walked and raced with my kids, and gazed at the beautiful Arizona sunsets.
So I ask you, my friend, what areas of your life could use some watering? Remember, just one step at a time can lead us down a great path!
My Influences - Edward Weston
Pepper No. 30, 1930/Edward Weston
I thought it would be fun to share some artists who have influenced me and my work. There are quite a few artists that have influenced me over the years but I am going to start off with my all-time favorite photographer, Edward Weston.
I was first introduced to the work of Edward Weston in my undergraduate History of Photography class. His work has inspired me from the first time I saw it. There is an amazing book called “Art and Fear” and in there, there was a description of their reactions to the first time they viewed Weston’s nudes. They said that there was the work in front of them and there was everything else; nothing else compared to Weston’s work, and that is the same way I felt when I saw it.
Weston had a great eye for the flow of the line whether it was in his peppers, shells, or in what he was most famous for his nudes. His photographs have given me a great interest in finding the beauty of the form within common objects. In the image above, Pepper No. 30, 1930, I feel drawn to the long lines that twist and flow into each other. It is almost as if two people are drawing each other into an embrace. This photograph offers up an invitation to stop and take in the beauty that we are too busy to stop and see.
This practice of looking at an object that is around your house was a big inspiration to me. I loved the idea of taking an object and looking at it in a totally new way. This allows us to draw out the beauty that so often we overlook.
I will leave with you one of my favorite quotes.
“Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.”
-Edward Weston