Abstracts

Using an array of abstraction techniques, I aim to evoke the feelings that natural forms can prompt in the viewer. Short series and single images.

Half Moon Bay, Ucluelet (2020)

My love letter to the haven offered by nature and a response to the shock of the first COVID lockdown in 2020. I made these and other works on the shoreline at the remote Half Moon Bay on Vancouver Island.

After months under lockdown, the lifting of restrictions in summer 2020 offered a much-needed opportunity to reconnect with the world. Immersed once again in nature, I wanted to revel in its most fundamental elements - the waves, the trees, the rocks - stretched out before me in the bay.

While the landscape and its features have permanence and substance, I chose to present them in an abstract, fleeting manner. It was a reminder that the privilege of visiting and being a part of such wondrous places could evaporate any time. I thus created the images using intentional camera movement on a long exposure, adding colour treatment and grain in digital post-processing.

As time has progressed, and climate emergencies have gathered pace in Canada and around the world, this series has taken on added significance, underscoring the fragility of our environment - and that we should not take it for granted.

Half Moon Bay, Ucluelet (II) won the Abstract category of the 16th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards for female photographers in 2021 and has been selected for international exhibitions.

A Night Like This: Gibsons, BC (2021)

I made these images at the end of a summer evening in Gibsons, BC on the west coast of Canada. The sky was hazy from wildfire smoke and it felt like all the colours of the sea, the land and the sky were blurring together. At one point, in the distance, the last ferry of the night was making its way back to Vancouver.

To represent these feelings in the abstract, these images were made variously using intentional camera movement and long exposure.

Unlikely Beauty (2021)

At the end of 2021 I set myself a month-long challenge to find and capture beauty in unlikely places and objects — every single day. These are some of the abstracts I made for that series.

Quarantine (2020)

With the arrival of the pandemic and the shutdown of society, optimistic moments were in short supply. To counter this, I began looking for the light at home.

Afternoon Dream (2019)

A vivid and warm fantasy garden awaits. I hope you’ll stay here a while and enjoy the sun.

This series of three abstract images was created on a Spring day outdoors in Vancouver. The everyday is made fantastical through an interplay between the natural and the manmade. Sunlight was manipulated in front of my camera’s lens using perforated gold metallic fabric and pink mesh.

These pieces embody my deep love for colour and structure that can be found throughout my photographic work.

Afternoon Dream (I) won in the Abstract category of the 14th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards in 2019 and has been selected for multiple exhibitions.