“To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.”
— Paul Valéry
Cypres dans le Brouillard, Pebble Beach, CA, 2009
2009 International Juried Exhibition, Center for Photographic Art, Carmel, CA
The cypress never told me its name. It did not need to.
It stood in Pebble Beach like a rumor the fog refused to confirm. Not quite silhouette, not quite flesh. A monarch with a crooked crown, shoulders hunched from decades of listening to the Pacific argue with the land. The tree did not pose. It waited. And waiting, I have learned, is a very advanced form of confidence.
This image was born from that waiting.
When I look at it now, I hear the prelude again. Something spare and deliberate. A few notes, then silence does most of the talking. The cypress rises from a low, restless carpet of scrub, the earth breathing in uneven sentences. The foreground hums with quiet agitation, textured, tangled, almost gossipy. The background retreats into mist, an intentional forgetting. Between them, the tree performs its role with calm authority, holding the entire composition together like a conductor who never lifts the baton.
The fog is not weather here. It is psychology.
It softens the horizon, erases certainty, and invites doubt to sit down and stay awhile. This is where I like to work. Where the world stops explaining itself and lets metaphor handle the heavy lifting. The cypress becomes a stand-in for persistence, for elegance under pressure, for that particular kind of solitude artists know too well. Not loneliness. Solitude with posture.
I have always believed trees are excellent autobiographers. This one tells its story in scars and bends, in a trunk that refuses symmetry, in branches shaped by forces it never consented to but adapted to anyway. I recognize that impulse. I create because not creating feels like slowly disappearing in polite society. Art, for me, is less a career choice and more a survival tactic dressed in decent shoes.
The image carries a quiet humor, too, though it does not announce it. The tree looks faintly theatrical, as if it knows it has been cast in a serious role and is enjoying it just a bit too much. The fog plays along, adding drama with restraint. No grand gestures. No visual shouting. Just enough ambiguity to make collectors lean in, curators pause, and photographers nod knowingly as if remembering a similar conversation they once had with a landscape that refused to be ordinary.
When this piece hung at the Center for Photographic Art during the 2009 International Juried Exhibition, juried by the legendary Al Weber, it felt oddly at home. Like the tree had simply wandered indoors for a while, curious about frames and wall labels, amused by the reverence. I imagine it standing there, patient as ever, letting viewers project their own stories onto its branches. Loss. Endurance. Time. Or simply a very handsome tree having an existential moment in coastal California.
This photograph is not about Pebble Beach, not really. It is about standing your ground while the world rearranges itself around you. It is about making art the way cypress trees grow. Slowly. In conversation with resistance. With just enough defiance to remain unmistakably yourself.
If there is humor here, it is the dry kind. The kind that smiles without showing teeth. The kind that knows seriousness and beauty are not opposites, just old acquaintances who pretend not to know each other at parties.
And yes, the prelude is still playing.
Artist Statement
My work explores the emotional architecture of landscapes as mirrors of the inner life. I am drawn to moments of ambiguity, where clarity is postponed, and meaning remains negotiable. Through cinematic and poetic imagery, I invite viewers to linger, project, and participate. Creating art is not optional for me. It is how I stay in dialogue with the world and with myself.