My Figurative Work | Painted Nude 091426
Art and insight emerged through the “flow lines” active meditation creative process:
My Figurative Work
“The figure becomes more than a body when it is approached as a vessel through which the deeper presence of the soul can be revealed.”
My figurative work begins with the human form, but it is not ultimately about the body alone. Working with photography and other media, I use the creative process to enter an immersive space of discovery, a journey toward the soul and the innermost truth of the person before me.
In this sense, these works are portraits.
What interests me is what emerges when self-consciousness, conditioning, expectation, and protection begin to soften. The camera becomes less an instrument for recording appearance and more a means of witnessing presence as it reveals itself through body, heart, and mind.
I sometimes describe this process as shamanic play. I do not use the word to claim any particular indigenous tradition, but to describe a creative practice of moving between ordinary perception and deeper symbolic, intuitive, and archetypal dimensions of experience. At its center is the Universal Mother, the Divine Feminine. By approaching this archetype with sacred reverence, I seek not to elevate the feminine over the masculine, but to restore both into harmony as complementary expressions of the Divine. From that union arises the guiding light I experience as intuition, informing both my work and the deeper purpose to which I have entrusted my life.
Trust is fundamental to this process.
My own life has been shaped by devotion. My intimate partnership has remained devoted to my wife, Jude, an alignment inseparable from the integrity I bring into the studio. It creates a foundation of stability and trust from which the muse and I can enter the unknown together.
As trust deepens, the person before the camera begins to relax. The body opens. Self-consciousness recedes. Something more essential can emerge. Love and Truth describes this as returning toward an open, relaxed, and alert state of presence, allowing the deeper self to participate in what unfolds.
This is where the work becomes sacred for me.
The feminine figure is not presented merely as an object of beauty or desire. Its sensuality, curvature, vulnerability, strength, and mystery become expressions of the Divine Feminine, the life-giving principle within humanity. Masculine and feminine become complementary forces seeking harmony within the whole.
What emerges may be sensual, sculptural, mysterious, powerful, or tender, but the deeper intention is therapeutic: through a presence grounded in Truth (trust) and Love, the muse is invited to open into the beauty of her own soul, while the viewer is invited to witness that emergence with reverence and awe.
For me, this is also part of a larger cultural rebalancing: to perceive the feminine form as sacred is to move beyond shame and objectification and recognize the body as a manifestation of life worthy of dignity, reverence, and wonder.
My figurative work is therefore not simply an exploration of the nude, but an ongoing meditation on presence, trust, surrender, and the re-emergence of the Divine Feminine.
Through the figure, I seek the soul; through trust, I enter the unknown; and through Love and Truth, I create a space in which the sacred can reveal itself.
