Photography: Floral Series

I started drawing when I was a 4-year old kid. I thought then that maybe drawing is a diversion I picked up to console and entertain myself in all those years that I grew up alone. I used to accompany my Mother to the Office where she would give me pen and paper so I would leave her alone (not that I was a burden, she told me I never was). I would draw what to me were the most beautiful women in the most elegant gowns that my tiny hands and childish imagination could handle. From time to time, the judge would pick up some of my works and showed them to my mother’s colleagues and to the lawyers who were making an appearance in his sala. “This girl’s going to be a fashion designer,” he would say in his cadenced voice. Later, I discovered that drawing is not a diversion after all when I saw that all of us in the family except Mother could draw breathtaking vistas. So, I picked out my pens and brushes more and more. Whenever I drew or painted with watercolor, I felt myself becoming one with my work, with the world of my object. Much the same feeling I have today when I sing. I don’t know what happened, I abandoned my art with my dream for lawyering. But then, I didn’t become a lawyer (“Too early to say that, you still have time to study law,” my sister would quip) and, slowly, my brushes were gathering dust in that dark corner of my room, my skill was getting cobwebs too. I got myself a job and got comfortable, generally comfortable with life. But there were those nights when alone in my room, I felt sudden spurts of inspiration to draw and felt lonely that I was no longer able to. It felt like missing a first love you have given up for something else. So, I decided to find the time to go back to that first love if only to add a texture to an otherwise fast becoming 2-dimensional life. And since I still do not have the time to do that now, I decided to pick on a not so high end point and shoot digital camera to capture images as partial fulfillment to my longing for my drawing. I still long for that day when I can sit beside a mentor and stretch canvass with him/her or take the squeegee, or that day when I can finally splurge on an Olympus digital SLR. But an artist, or someone who fashioned herself as one, would not want to be limited and defined by what she does not have. So, I have taken a few shots and would want to explore more despite the limited resources. Below are a few of those shots.

These are one variety of the bromeliad which thrived in my Mother’s garden. When they are in bloom, the world is bathed in a splash of red.

These flowers are as old as myself. They have been around since I was born. I love their pastel colors, just a hint of pink. The one at the bottom belongs to the jasmine family I guess (I’m not so sure). Just look at it, it seems like it is made from crepe de chine, isn’t it?

Beautiful in all its understated redness.

Autumn crocus and portulacca which are more or less fragile to consider thrive in this stony hardy corner.

Just check out every now and then. I plan to post more of my works.