I dont
even like telling people that there are paintings in the flower work because in
a sense it is not important. It is if you want to know how to make them, but probably
you wouldnt be able to make them anyway because I made them. You make your
own weird thing.
Stephanie Torbert | This
is the very first of a whole series of flowers that I did over ten years,
says Stephanie Torbert about her photograph Protean Landscape. I
did it just as an experiment and I liked it so much that it led to ten more years
of work. The experiment began as painting and drawing, and eventually Torbert
combined her landscapes with flowers to create something totally new. Protea
is the name of the flower in the picture, but Protean means changeable,
variable, assuming different forms or characters. Proteus was a god of classical
mythology who could take on different forms at will. The title of the
picture is a play on words that describes Torberts sense of the natural
world. I am very much concerned about the environment and the connections
between what is very beautiful and what is very sinister, she muses. People
have moved things all over the world and because of moving things they have created
environments that arent really natural. Instead theyre threatening.
The combination of a natural form with an unnatural backdrop makes something that
appears to be natural. |