How Flowers Speak to Me

Just as we can walk along the street and ignore what one would call an “inconsequential” being,  thus can one wander along a path and ignore the beauty and radiance of one of God’s Creations.

The journey with flowers is very similar to the journey into the human body.  One starts initially as a photographer experiencing the entire form….looking at the stem, the leaves, the stamens, the pistols, the petals….

Similarily, one initially observes the human body…the skin, the hair, the arms, the legs ….but eventually, with our body, it becomes an inward journey….infinitely inward

And so it is with the flowers…..infinitely observing the play of the light at the most “up close and personal” encounter.

Flowers have postures.  Flowers have demeanor.  Flowers have faces.

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​I see many photographic images showing stylistic kinds of manipulation which deviate so far away from a feeling of truth, and from nature, that I lose any kind of resonance with them. In yours, Elizabeth, there is kind of a God-like perspective; a “visual whisper” touching these other possible soulful, vibrational realms where essences become clear and perhaps even more real than what we see with our eyes. It’s such a pleasure to experience your gifts and to visualize these along with you! 

You have created such a natural blend between the photography and painting: representing the eloquence and beauty of the real world, the natural world that we love so much; and the freedom of a hand-made craft that painting offers . . . our own intuitive sense of color harmonies, and the contrasts between softness and the precision and delicacy of a sharpened edge – where our intuition chooses and guides us . .
​- Grant Taylor :  Artist, Teacher and Photographer 

“What an outstanding imagist, poet and mystic you are!   Your fascinating images show the last veils of maya world,  You visualize the membrane between physical and spiritual world,   You illustrate the interchange between matter and spirit  You’re an admirable and experienced explorer of ‘twilight zone’,  Your amazing meditation paintings open the gates of paradise!”
– Armin Baumgartner, Author and Photographer,  Germany

In creating a Photograph, or should I say co-creaitng with the Master Creator…Divinity Itself..it has never felt to be my “participation” to replicate with perfection what is already without flaw..
but more to allow the ethers to direct the flow and the mystery, to soften edges where they were once sharp, and to simply let go and flutter with the petals..
One with it all..with a wee smattering of my Soul mixed in.
Lizzie…

As a child, Toronto born Elizabeth DeVries (EdeV) spent countless hours in nature. She loved to spend hours alone with her wild creature friends. Her deep love of animals, especially horses, and the time she spent alone wandering in forests or near lakes brought solace to her solitary soul.

She recognized that her sensitivity to beauty was inborn, and that she viewed  life through a different lens than most. From early childhood, Elizabeth had visionary experiences that brought her into mystical and magical worlds.  Her visionary experiences were commonplace in “her world” as she sat amongst burnished leaves and built altars to celebrate God’s Creation with her “imaginary friends..”

Elizabeth writes, “My first love affair with flowers commenced with the rose. Be it a delicate tea rose with the light shining through or the multi-petaled hybrid, they all stir my heart with sweet memories of life with my long deceased mother. Each day of her life started and ended with flowers. She nursed them through the harsh Canadian winters, delicately wrapping them with cloth to avoid the deep ground frost. She taught me to give them loving care, to transplant, prune and fertilize them, to wash their leaves and caress their spirits with a soft encouraging voice. I happily embrace her legacy of love.”

For years I arose pre-dawn and traipsed through nature amongst the flower friends. Sometimes I would lie in beds of calla lilies as the dawn’s first rays hit the centre of the orange stamens. It was all about light and colour. My lens  sought to capture each tiny shift of light… the fragmentary impressions created by the  Light moving through the translucent leaves and petals….

Sometimes I would purchase varieties of peonies, calla lilies  or brugmansia and simply immerse them in bowls of water allowing the water and light to do their magic. One becomes a co-creator with the flower as it shifts and flows.  From thousands of photographs the images were culled down to a select few.

The next stage of the creative process would then commence.  Through creating collages of different images I would “marry” them together to enhance their unique individual expression of beauty.  While in a partial meditative state I worked individually with each image, enhancing and flowing, until its essence began to emerge.

It is difficult to encapsulate what is occurring here. Perhaps this process could be defined as “immersing oneself in the Divine Source of Creation” then allowing my “individual expression of Divine Source to co-create with the original pure creative expression.”

The end result is an expression of Creation through my individual Spiritual lens.

My heartfelt desire is that these images hang in hospitals, hospices, homes for the elderly, rehabilitation centers and healing facilities so that those who are in pain or suffering in any manner can receive solace and be Divinely inspired.

Eliza
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Flowers are seeking the light.  In fact their entire life from the moment of “becoming” from a seed pushing it’s small green shoot through the earth is a journey towards the light…through the physicality upwards to the ephemeral.

Flowers dance together.  Flowers make love with the wind.  Flowers blossom from the sun but are bathed by the rain.

Walking through God’s Creation brings me to a soulful understanding of the Divine Energy Field which exists and becomes life through the tiniest of forms…the unnoticed carries the crucible of all of God’s Highest manifestation.

Gallery

“Oh Elizabeth, you have created something so special and so personal and very wonderful.  Your work is enchanting and disturbing in a gentle way. The close-ups are so intense that there is nowhere to hide… and I like being so close to the essence and feeling of your subjects. Your work is compelling and it stirred me deeply.

Jayne Young
Art Collector and former Publisher and President of Atlantic Monthly