Organic Evolution
My favorite pastime when I went to my grandmother’s home was to look through a wooden box of black and white photos in her bedroom. They included images of my mother growing up on an eighty-acre farm in a European immigrant community in southern Alabama. The photos weren’t just snapshots but orchestrated pictorials of her history. Here is a tableau of my mother as a teenager surrounded by local fans and flora. When she met my father and they had children this custom of staging portraits in floral settings carried over to the next generation. When I took my first photography class in college I too placed myself and friends in similar stages.
The first time my work was on a gallery wall it was from this negative of my friend Mo with the color painted in oil. The other piece was of me lying in the fall leaves. Since I was nude I will spare you that exact image.
In 1994, I finally got the dog I always wanted and named him Buster Love. I continued our family tradition of floral portraiture. While working as a photojournalist, I was required to do photo illustrations. When I was given an assignment for the trending, chunky loafer, Buster Love made his printed publication debut.
Throughout the years, whether I was given an assignment on erectile dysfunction or menopause, I would use nature to convey the message. Here are a few newspaper clips of illustrations from the late nineties.
Despite my day job, I continued to work on my personal art, which was always outside focusing on nature and never physical indoor settings. The only interiors I find fascinating are psychological.
CAROLINA CLEERE
