In the late fall of 2023, on my studio table, I began assembling the leaves that I cut from my house plants with the petals of the lilies that dropped off the gorgeous bouquets that decorated the dining table of a friend with whom I used to dine every weekend. I started photographing them.

The photo series continued as the collection of leaves and flowers grew. Many of the petals are from the flowers in my friend’s garden which he used to give me to take home from my visits.

Leaves and Flowers 2-12

It wasn’t long before I realized that these images had a different kind of energy from Drawing with Nature, 1 – 100, 2022, and Drawing with Nature, 101-207, 2022-23. In those two series, I was using photography for the first time in recording imagery that was about living in the city. The constituents of nature as I had known them in the country were right outside the door of my home. I would surround myself with trees, flowers, brooks, and streams any time I felt like it. Now, I had to grow houseplants or buy flowers or drive somewhere to appreciate greenness or natural color.

The language of the imagery of Leaves and Flowers was limited and direct. As the series unfolded, my five-month relationship with my friend ended. The vestiges of the lily bouquets remained on my table in my studio. I don’t believe the photographs became mournful because of my loss. The objectification of the subject matter already existed.

Leaves and Flowers 13-22

The more I photographed through the winter, through a bout with Covid, and through the pain of being alone again, I began to incorporate into the photos everything in the studio that elicited nature… prints of Japanese prints discovered on the internet; copies of Japanese calligraphy written on walls, on paintings or on prints that I found in books; pieces of Japanese papers leftover from other work; pages of scribbles made to reboot stopped-up pens; stencils I made from my own drawings; printed photographs I had taken myself; and copies of reproductions of contemporary paintings from books. The prints I made of calligraphy enriched my vision; they supported the idea of creating a language from natural form, no matter how scattered or irregular the symbolism would be if any correlations existed at all.

Leaves and Flowers 23-30

About a third of the way in, I finally understood my motive and my motifs. I was making still lifes. I was focusing on the design of the image. I was at the point where I knew how I was going to apply these images lessons outside of themselves. That idea is indicated in the black-and-white image of number 35 below. I wanted to see a pure form that could be removed from the photograph and placed in another format.

Leaves and Flowers 31-35

I started to make compositions out of what lay on the table, something I thought that I would never do. Drawing with Nature had been about improvising when I photographed whatever I saw through the camera lens. Now I was casually moving everything around to make more sense of it. I was painting in three dimensions. I was working purposefully within a frame.

Leaves and Flowers 36-50

The remaining fifty images, I am posting in slide show groups, starting with 51-60.

61-70

71-80

81-90

91-100

In my effort to maximize the focal point to discover form, I decided, in the middle of producing these pictures, to start a new series that included both a photographic image and a drawing on the same page. Below is one of the attempts at that. This is one of a series of six called Repeated Forms. The pieces are each 30 inches in height by 24 inches wide. The photograph printed on this piece is Leaves and Flowers 35.

None of the photographs documented in this post have a set size. They are only digital images and can be printed in different sizes.

copyright 2024 Lyn Horton