“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
— Aristotle
Dissonance n.4, Monterey, CA, 2009
Prix de la Photographie, Paris, 2011
I have always been drawn to harmony.
Perhaps it comes from music. From the way a piano can resolve tension into something luminous and whole. But what I learned, long before I understood it consciously, is that harmony without dissonance is forgettable.
These flowers taught me that.
At first glance, they appear gracious. Poised. Almost aristocratic in their bearing. The pale bloom bends inward with a kind of contemplative dignity. The darker one gestures outward, layered and expressive, as though delivering a final monologue before the curtain falls.
But look longer.
The surfaces are not pristine. They are scratched, weathered, touched by time. The atmosphere surrounding them carries abrasions, faint scars, quiet disturbances. Beauty, yes. But not untouched beauty.
And that is where the truth lives.
When I worked on this series, I found myself resisting the temptation to smooth everything into perfection. My instinct as an artist trained in romanticism is to protect beauty. To elevate it. To bathe it in grace.
Yet something in me insisted on friction.
So I allowed the textures to remain imperfect. I allowed surfaces to carry dissonant marks. I let time press itself visibly into the image.
The result is a visual chord that refuses easy resolution.
These flowers exist between elegance and erosion. Between lyricism and abrasion. Between the sweetness of bloom and the relentless hand of passage.
Dissonance n.5, Monterey, CA, 2009
Prix de la Photographie, Paris, 2011
In music, dissonance is not a mistake. It is tension that makes the eventual resolution meaningful. It is the ache that gives the melody depth.
Here, the scratches and worn textures are not decorative devices. They are the minor key beneath the petals. They remind us that time is not gentle. It does not ask permission. It inscribes itself.
The flowers remain gracious, yes. But they are gracious in defiance.
They carry themselves like figures who have endured something. They are not naïve blossoms fresh from morning light. They are witnesses.
I see myself in that.
As artists, we are often expected to produce polished surfaces. Flawless images. Seamless illusions. But I have come to believe that the marks, the fractures, the dissonant interruptions are what make a piece breathe.
They are what make it human.
When this series received recognition in Paris, I felt something quiet and affirming. Not because the flowers were beautiful. But because their imperfection was allowed to speak.
Collectors who live with these works tell me that the longer they look, the more they notice the tension. The gentleness and the abrasion coexisting in the same frame.
That coexistence is life itself.
The flowers bow. They lean. They endure.
They do not resist the scratches of time.
They absorb them.
And in that absorption, they become something more than decorative. They become symphonic.
Artist Statement
In this series, I explore beauty in a minor key. The flowers appear gracious, yet their surfaces carry the marks of time, scratches, erosion, and subtle dissonance. I intentionally preserve these imperfections to reveal the tension between harmony and decay. For me, art is not about resolving that tension, but about allowing it to resonate. The result is a meditation on endurance, where elegance coexists with abrasion and impermanence becomes a form of quiet strength.