I have deep memories of times, during my early years, spent on the creek beside our house in Calvert County.  The magic and mystery of that time remains with me here on the Eastern Shore so many years later.  All the creeks I have entered form their own distinctly different realms in which I am only an observer.

Over the past few years I have been engaged in a project titled “Green Mansions”. The title is taken from a book of that name written by William Henry Hudson, published in 1904. It is the story of a young man, Abel, who has fled into an uncharted area of a forest in South America. Strange birdlike singing leads him to find Rima, “the bird girl”. She is magical and seems to have a pact with nature. She wears a smock of spider silk and is able to communicate with birds in an unknown tongue. We find out later that she is unable to sustain herself in Abel’s civilized world. She is inextricably connected to the forest. I think it is my longing to find a bridge to these realms that continually draws me to attempt to become a part of them through photography.

The Green Mansions series is printed in Platinum, a process that was  often used in the latter part of the 19th Century.