“I don’t trust words. I trust pictures.”
— Gilles Peress
Still Life with Ranunculus, Pebble Beach, CA, 2018
I begin the year with a vase that refuses to behave.
Two pale flowers rise from it like reluctant witnesses, their stems thin, almost apologetic, as if unsure they deserve the light falling across the room. Behind them, their shadows grow bolder, darker, more confident than the flowers themselves. The shadows seem to know something the flowers do not. They stretch across the wall with theatrical flair, exaggerating every curve, every hesitation, every quiet ambition.
This is how beginnings often feel. Modest in the foreground. Monumental in the imagination.
The vase sits low, grounded, carrying the faint memory of hands that shaped it long before this moment. It feels domestic, familiar, almost shy. Yet the light enters like a stage cue, carving the scene into planes of hush and anticipation. The background is not empty. It hums. It listens. It waits. Nothing here shouts, and yet everything insists.
I have always loved still life for this reason. It is the most patient of genres. Objects do not perform for the camera. They reveal themselves only if you give them time, respect, and a little mystery. In this quiet arrangement, I recognize myself. The artist who stands just out of frame, arranging fragments of the world while wrestling with their own shadows, hoping they grow into something eloquent.
The flowers lean, not toward perfection, but toward possibility. Their petals feel worn, lived-in, unconcerned with freshness. They are not about bloom. They are about endurance. About choosing to stand again in a new year, even when the past clings softly to your edges.
And then there are the shadows. Those beautiful liars. They tell a bigger story than the objects that cast them. They suggest drama, history, perhaps even danger. They whisper that what we become is often larger, stranger, and more compelling than what we think we are.
As I look at this image, I am reminded that art is not made to explain the world. It is made to sit with it. To negotiate with light. To let uncertainty breathe. To begin again without erasing what came before.
This still life marks no grand resolution. There are no promises shouted into the void. Only a quiet agreement between me and the year ahead. I will keep placing fragile things into uncertain light. I will keep letting shadows speak. I will keep beginning, even when the beginning looks suspiciously like a continuation.
After all, new beginnings rarely arrive wrapped in fireworks. Sometimes they arrive as two tired flowers in a humble vase, casting shadows far braver than themselves.
Artist Statement
My work lives in the space between objects and their echoes. I use still life as a stage for introspection, allowing light, shadow, and texture to carry emotional weight. Rather than resolve meaning, I invite ambiguity, trusting viewers to complete the story through their own memories and sensations. Each image is both a pause and a beginning.