Gymnopédies is a series of botanical portraits, which takes its name from a trio of piano compositions by 19th century French composer Erik Satie. Void of connotation, the unusual title freed Satie from stylistic constraints and gifted his audience a new experience of music. Gymnopédies encourages a similar foray into the realm of flower photography. The artist disavows context and convention, eschewing sentimentality in favour of heady tonal interplay. The chiaroscuro abstracts and anthropomorphizes, exposing some of nature's more subversive personalities. As with Satie's work, these images pacify through dramatic texture, emotional provocation and a welcomed dissonance. They are innocent and erotic still lifes in motion.

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About
Nearly two decades ago, I launched a career as a documentary and portrait photographer with a series of black and white portraits of breast cancer survivors. I wanted to document the ways female beauty can be enhanced by angry scars and indomitable courage. My images, which I self-published in the collection Body & Soul: The Courage & Beauty of Breast Cancer Survivors, garnered national recognition from the Dallas Morning News; Oprah magazine; Texas Monthly; CNN; NPR; and on NBCs Today Show with Ann Curry. I've since produced numerous other bodies of work celebrating women and disrupting prevailing notions of beauty. (In)Sight: Women Who Work Behind the Lens, featuring a series of black/white portraits of some of the most eminent female photographers and curators working today, will be part of the group exhibition with SohoPhoto Gallery, NYC, April 2022. My series, Gymnopédies, exposes the counterintuitive nature of botanicals, proving flowers can be their most colourful in black/white. DISAPPEARING SOUL: SELF PORTRAITS IN THE TIME OF Covid, my latest series documenting my life during "lockdown", was selected for the cover of the International Online Publication, Eye of Photography, March 5, 2021. April 8 2021, a selection of images were chosen for the online photography magazine ARTDOC for their Narrative Portrait Series. Although I'm originally from Texas, I'm now based in New York City.

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