A ROOM OF MY OWN
This year I’ve had home of my own – an apartment with a courtyard garden – that has been transformative for both my life and my practice. To paraphrase Virginia Woolf, having a room (and garden) of my own has given me creative freedom and has been a vital source of nourishment for my art practice.
For the past couple of years I have been exploring the use of lumen prints made with plants, but this year’s work has taken on new significance as I’ve begun using flowers and foliage grown from my own seedlings and bulbs. I arrange the plants on an exposure unit and lay photographic paper over them, allowing light and time to create an image. The resulting lumen prints are then scanned and digitally manipulated in Photoshop, creating a new way of seeing, recording and celebrating my garden.
This process has deepened my awareness of the cycles of growth and decay that govern both the garden and the photographic paper itself. As the lumen prints gradually degrade, they mirror the inevitable transformations within nature. I witness the same impermanence in my plants as they go through their life cycle. Through digital preservation, I extend their existence through my own artistic expression.
My practice resonates with philosopher Michael Marder’s ideas about plant temporality – how plants experience and express time differently from humans. Marder’s writing has helped me understand my garden as a living system that embodies slowness, patience and cyclical renewal. In my lumen prints, I see this plant-time revealed: images are formed through gradual exposure and change.
In collaborating with my garden I have grounded my art practice in cycles of growth, temporality and creative renewal.
