Winners Gallery - FotoSlovo 2024
Series - FotoSlovo 2024 - Category « Trip / Essay »
Honorable Mention
The composite series of trees-scape portraits convey ideas about growth, and the quest for personal identity. With age and experience, shedding parts of ourselves that no longer reflect who we are.
My series is inspired by Elisabeth Margaret Hopkins who wrote her first children’s book, The Painted Cougar, at 83 years old. Her story is of a cougar who seeks beauty to get the attention of a lioness he admires. During his quest he meets a snake who paints his coat in colourful illustrations. Believing he has found beauty the cougar returns to his kingdom and weds the lioness. After the wedding she licks away his painted coat and confides she has always loved him just as he was.
My series recalls the cougar’s realization of his own self-worth, as well as Hopkins’s late emergence an author. Their experiences – animal and artist – remind us of the struggles we undertake to be freed from expectations. The play between expectation and self-determination is reflected in my pieces, suggesting the comforting knowledge that no matter our present circumstances we always hold the power and potential to transform.