This image wasn’t meant to carry all this, but tonight, it does. It holds the rupture I didn’t know I’d been tiptoeing around all week.
A decade ago today, my father died. Not on the 13th, when the machines started breathing for him—that was just when I knew he was gone. On the 18th, at this hour, the veil broke open for real. And now here I am—ten years later—haunted by dreams I couldn’t explain and a sudden stillness in my creativity I couldn’t shake.
Until now.
I thought I was just tired. Distracted. Stuck. But it was grief. It was reverence in disguise.
My soul remembered the date even when my mind forgot. That’s the strange thing about grief that matures—it doesn’t scream anymore. It hums, low and holy, beneath everything. It clouds the light, then sharpens it. It takes your voice, then gives it back with new timbre.
This image—originally photographed by Mikhail Nilov—became a sort of altar. I edited it using Mextures, VSCO, DistressedFX, and Lightroom, layering texture over color, blurring presence and absence, trying to capture what it feels like when sorrow doesn’t knock—it just saturates.
Sanctum.
There’s chaos in this. Petals and light blurred through glass and rain. Beauty you can’t quite hold. A yellow rose—like the ones we laid at his grave—folding in on itself. A daisy, centered in clarity, yet surrounded by blur.
That’s what this night feels like. Clarity in the middle of confusion. Stillness in the swirl.
Earlier tonight, as I outlined these words in my head while I felt my way through the shift I felt in real-time in the energy, I said to myself:
“You didn’t lose your creativity. You’re in holy pause. This isn’t numbness—it’s reverence. You were unconsciously grieving a resurrection-day anniversary, and your spirit bowed its head before your body could even name the loss.”
And now, I feel it even more deeply: Tonight isn’t for making things happen. It’s for honoring what already did.
Tonight is for prayer—prayer and intercession not only over the souls of loved ones who have already crossed over, but over one very important soul who’s still here. One who I know doesn’t understand why I had to go.
The truth is, those crossed over souls didn’t leave to hurt me…even though it did. They left because it was time. That was my burden to bear. The lessons they left me with were my responsibility to sort through, clean up, and learn.
Likewise, I didn’t leave the living out of anger or rejection, or even lack of love. I left because God Himself guided me in a different direction, even if they didn’t want to go that way, or grow that way, too. I will never have a choice above God. And I know that hurts…it hurts me, too.
Forgiveness is an ongoing action, reflected not in words but in the quiet practice of letting go. The love is, and always will be, unconditional. “Anyway love” always is. And my soul will carry a piece of all of their souls within it. Always.
A lot of things are coming full circle for me tonight. Invisible messages carried by unseen energies are releasing a kind of clarity within me—one of deeper substance and fuller understanding, puzzles pieces arriving and falling into place in a way I’ve never experienced before. The spiritual warfare, the dreams full of ghosts, the aching grief—none of that is new. But the understanding I have tonight…it reaches deeper than anything I’ve ever touched before.
Tonight isn’t for sorting through the rubble, cleaning up the floors of my memory, or putting all the lessons learned into neat little compartments in my mind. After all, I’ve already been processing through that, and slowly overcoming it all, for some time now.
No, tonight isn’t for being swallowed by the hauntings of my own heart. Tonight is for letting grief rain gently through the window, washing my soul—and watching how even the blur, when looked at with love and patience, can be textured out, shaped into a symbolic snapshot in time—capturing both the beauty and the chaos—and become art.
It is the emblem of the closure of what has, all at once, been the most painful and the most beautiful decade of my life: the one where, in the end, I finally met God.
I speak the name of Jesus over you In your hurting, in your sorrow I will ask my God to move I speak the name ’cause it’s all that I can do In desperation, I’ll seek Heaven And pray this for you:
I pray for your healing That circumstances will change I pray that the fear inside will flee in Jesus name I pray that a breakthrough Would happen today I pray miracles over your life in Jesus name I pray for revival For restoration of faith I pray that the dead will come alive in Jesus name
A random, inexplicable flux. That insatiable need to create. Some unseen force guiding me to conjure, to express, to birth something.
It happened again last night, but in the same instant that I felt the proverbial tap on my shoulder, a heaviness threatened to settle there. Born and bred creatives know this experience, all the way into their bones.
It comes with a dread, and creates a dangerous, self-sabotaging pre-regret. It manifests from a complete lack of vision:
No concept. No plan. No brilliant idea waiting to be realized. Certainly, no idea where to begin.
Lost but not lacking awareness, and determined to win over the weight of what really boils down to fear of failure, I asked, “what do we want? What is the spark?”
As expected, the silence answered with more of the same cryptic transmission: “Just ‘do.’ Ripples turn into waves.”
So, I rummaged.
I plundered through the old tools and the old toys. You know the ones—the “Ghosts of Projects Past,” our artistic Scrooge’s worst nightmares. The ones tucked away in dusty, overflowing “Likely Garbage” photography folders and long forgotten apps.
The ancient, the analog, the abandoned fragments of another era.
I pulled out the remnants of what once inspired me, not because I knew what I was doing, but because whatever had stirred was creating a riot within me.
These moments are never a question of choice, so I just…explored. Guessed. Played. Flowed.
s e n t i n e lg r i e f
Sometimes, perhaps most often, that is the best option. Even if the outcome feels unfamiliar or strange, or doesn’t resemble the “usual” desired outcome. Even if the result is wildly imperfect or impossible to explain…
It is in this uncertain, instinctual process that magic lives and breathes. This is where it sizzles and crackles and arcs, like a furious current from Tesla’s coil—except in this case we don’t need Faraday’s cage.
Creatives—artists, writers, dreamers, philosophers—need the opposite. We need this chaotic energy to touch, and to consume, us. It is the rejection, the not allowing it to, that kills us…and that is always a slow, excruciating death, from the inside out.
In art and creativity, exciting results are not found in safety. They’re not found in perfection. Organic process is not found in planning. Everything in and about the Creative archetype is found in the act of simply showing up.
Creative inspiration doesn’t ask for permission. It asks for presence. It asks that you show up and let it burn through you. The only wrong move is not moving at all.
📷 Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH Mega OIS ⚒️ Fragment + Mextures + Lightroom
entry ten — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
My mother always told me, in every possible circumstance a child might ever need encouragement, “Do your best, and leave the rest. It’ll all come right some day or night.”
It was a line from “Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell.”
She was a third grade teacher, a grammar Nazi, and a mother trying her damndest to connect with me and, well, do her best.
And, as ornery and difficult a young person as I could often be, she never knew that I believed her…
…even when I forgot I did.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
There was so much distance between us as I struggled through high school with her overbearing “sin obsessed” guidance, and she struggled to save my soul.
Even when the days were so long, when they bled into each other, and when the nights felt like punishments I hadn’t earned, as her brain and body were swallowed by Alzheimer’s.
Even when the thread broke, or maybe I cut it, when she died…I honored and nursed a clean, holy wound in the shape of freedom for both of us, from past grievances, from debts yet unpaid, from fear, from tension, from aching hearts and confused minds and the evils of that horrific disease.
Still, that line stayed, like a soft breath. Like a healing balm. Like the part of her that couldn’t leave, because it lived in me.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Do your best. Not more than that. Not perfection. Just presence. I tried, truly.
Leave the rest… The story. The tragedy. The one who couldn’t stay.
entry nine — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Weevil (Meibomeus musculus), a quiet laborer of the forest and the fields…carrying the weight of being, petal by petal. Vision: Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S. Tools: VSCO (KP3), Mextures (personalized texture formula: QBHASZK), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
There is a kind of presence that doesn’t announce itself.
No sound. No shimmer. No need to be noticed. Just a body doing what it does.
Clinging to a petal, breathing the moment, belonging to the quiet. Sometimes, that is the work.
Not saving, not proving. Just being.
And somehow…it shifts the entire forest, the entire field.
For some souls, there is a burden in being seen —not the fear of visibility, but the ache of being misread when presence itself was the offering.
I’ve been wanting to go back to my beginner photography roots…back to the tools that first taught me how to see. Not the Leica fixed macro. Not the Sony or Tamron glass. Not even the newer body. None of my inherited equipment. Just…my roots.
I used my fully outdated, beautifully obsolete LUMIX GX7—a replacement for my original GF3, long since gone—and its 20mm prime, with the same kind of macro filters that began and cemented my obsession with close-up work nearly a quarter century ago.
A while ago, we cracked this geode open with a hammer. No fancy saws, just risk and dumb luck here.
Original capture, using LUMIX GX7 + 20mm prime kit lens + stacked, simple macro filters (10, 4, 2, 1).
I suppose one should be more careful with nature, but nature is often far more careless with itself (and with us) than we would dare to be.
It takes that kind of recklessness to create rocks like this: extreme destruction, tons of pressure, and the long, drawn-out silence of time.
The first shot is a 2×3 crop of the original, watermark added. It radiates stillness, but also origin. Not just a photo of a mineral, but the witnessing of an unveiling. Beauty born not of perfection, but of extreme heat and cold, of force and risk, of patience and faith.
VSCO edit of original, using B5 Pro (further edits described below).
The second is a black-and-white VSCO edit: a touch of clarity, a whisper of bloom, a cool tint in the lightly raised shadows, and a layer of grain like cosmic dust.
But what is really there? What is the captured magic?
In the first, I see the quiet unfolding of a secret. Light caught mid-breath, nestled in silence, not trying to perform, but simply to be observed. Crystals shimmering like they’re whispering, not shouting. Softness holding the sharpness in tension. Truth in the raw moment of becoming.
In the second, I wanted to draw attention to the structure beneath the shimmer. The architecture of pressure. The monochrome strips away the sparkle to reveal something more elemental.
Less about beauty, more about bones. A lunar map. The scar tissue of a planet. A meteorite’s grain. A deep-space scan. A memory of rupture, filtered through time. A chorus of diamonds at the end of becoming, born of charcoal and starlight.
What do you see? Not with your eyes alone, but soul.
Soul vision. That’s what I see with most often. Especially now.
Sometimes, even when life isn’t spiraling out of control, it feels like it is. Maybe there’s no reason. And when it happens, there’s almost certainly no rhyme.
So what do we do—especially as artists of any kind—when the world around us reeks of chaos and seems to have lost all its marbles?
Abstract.
No matter what kind of artist you are, no matter your medium or your muse, no matter your level of inspiration (or lack thereof), abstract can be a perfect middle ground to ground your spirit, or wake it up.
The Scenario
Of course you (ok, I) woke up at 12:01 AM for no “apparent” reason—the absolute cosmic middle finger of liminal time, where nothing makes sense and yet everything feels oddly sacred.
Maybe, like me, you didn’t have any looming crises to fret over, or feel any real emotion about waking up at an inconvenient time (or being distracted, if it’s not the middle of the night for you). Spoiler alert: that “no emotion” is still an emotion.
I think—for a lot of us deep feelers, thinkers, philosophers and creatives right now—that numb, unanchored state has a lot to do with the collective dissonance we’re living through. There’s a major divide between those trying to evolve and live with intention, and those still operating from fear, ego, and unchecked reactivity.
Even if we try to stay grounded, we still feel the chaos buzzing around us. We still feel the friction of a world flailing through an identity crisis. And while we may not want to name it all or get swept up in it, we still end up absorbing the noise—because that’s what happens when you’re tuned in to—and transmuting—what others refuse to confront.
Another spoiler alert: things could be fine…if more people paused before projecting, reacted less and reflected more, took accountability for their realities—and how/what they contributed to their creation—and stopped mistaking emotional immaturity for a personality trait.
Alas, for me, that energy—and that emptiness, void of any clear direction, yet full of invisible limits (like everyone else being asleep, so I have to be quiet, for example)—is exactly the kind of blank page that’s just waiting to be painted on.
Literally and metaphorically.
Me? I felt the pull toward abstract watercolor. After a chaotic day juggling real life—and feeling deeply grateful that I don’t have to bend a knee to the public school system or navigate the mess so many parents of school-aged kids are facing—this makes complete sense. Abstract is, after all, what we turn to when logic is exhausted and emotion has no specific name.
Maybe, like me, you’re not uninspired—you’re just not anchored in this moment. Maybe, like me, it feels like you’re floating a little. Untethered. Not because you don’t care or don’t want to create, but because everything around you feels too slippery to hold onto. Too uncertain to frame.
I have come to understand that when that happens, my soul isn’t asking for structure. It’s asking for space. It’s asking for breath. It’s asking for some way—any way—to come home to the present moment without having to name it, define it, or pin it down.
That’s where abstract steps in. Not as a replacement for direction, but as a safe space to reconnect before you try to direct anything at all. In these moments, I’ve found that what’s waiting to be uncovered isn’t something planned or polished, but something feeling-based and rule-free—a piece born from presence, not pressure.
Try this, if you’re in a space like that. ⤵️
A Gentle Framework for Midnight Abstracts
Color Prompt:
Close your eyes and take three deep breaths. Think of the word: “release.” Without judgment, what three colors float into your mind? Even if they’re weird together—especially if they are—let them lead.
Composition Prompt:
Whatever your medium, start simple and let the process unfold.
If you’re shooting photography, don’t force the subject or the composition. Wander your space, and just shoot. Let your eye catch on whatever it catches on—light, shadow, texture, reflections. Let it all—even the clutter—guide you. Try new angles. Blur the focus. Let it be weird. Let it breathe.
Fun photography hack for this kind of energy:
Don’t be afraid to create outrageous effects with tools like Lightroom, Photoshop, or even apps on your phone. These tools aren’t just for polish—they’re wonderful (and especially useful) playgrounds for unlimited texture, distortion, and mood. Perfect for transforming ordinary shots into abstract, emotionally charged pieces.
Lean into the surreal. Add grain. Blow out the exposure. Warp the tones. You might just end up with a visual journal entry that says far more than any perfectly posed image ever could.
If you’re working with mixed media, paints, inks, clay, sketching/drawing, writing, or even scrapbooking or junk journaling—don’t force shape or form. Let your hands (or your heart) lead before your mind starts trying to make sense of it.
I’m drawn to watercolor as I write this post, so when I finish this post and start painting, I’ll start with a layered wash using just one color. Let the water move it. Drop in my second and third colors without intention—just observing how they bloom, resist, or swirl. I’ll add detail only if my hand naturally reaches for the brush again.
Examples of abstract watercolor, following exercises in Kate Leach’s “Creative Abstract Watercolor” book. I have the Kindle edition and would recommend the book 77/10 for inspiration and information, but I’d 1000/10 recommend the PRINT EDITION over Kindle if you’d like to add it to your library.
Let the chaos speak.
Sometimes that’s all it takes—one odd hour, a small canvas (whatever that looks like for you), and a handful of scattered supplies. Water, glue, tape, scrap paper, stickers, markers, pens, brushes…even a few oddly placed objects to capture in still photos on a clear or cluttered surfaces. It doesn’t have to be planned or polished.
All it really takes is a little setting of soul-driven intention, then a little courage to move that intention into action, to make something unexpectedly beautiful from what doesn’t make any logical sense.
No rules or expectations required. Just presence. Just honesty. Just the courage to let what’s inside you move—without needing to explain it first.
That’s the beauty of abstract. It doesn’t ask you to be understood. It just asks—and allows—you to be real; and that’s the truest art there is.
Flowers!?? Of course, flowers! How could I not start this whole top five/top ten thing with anything else when that is what I shoot the most?? OK – it’s probably a tie with droplets, but even those are technically flower shots. ((blows raspberry)
Specifically, as you’ll remember me mentioning Nicole if you read my last post, flowers are what she first asked me to choose as a top five list. I’m going to have to go with ten, though, because I share almost exclusively flowers. It was too difficult for me to choose just five. In fact, it was extremely difficult for me to put these in any sort of order as far as my own “top” choices. The rest of these will likely be “five” lists. This one was definitely the hardest.
10. Blue
I love this one because it combines different visual elements but still keeps the flower as the focal point. Another reason this one is special is because I shot it to complete a calendar I was doing for my Mom. This flower was one from one of the sprays given in memory of my father at his wake, and it also reminds me of the blue and white ceramics that she collects. Things so often tie together like that, in my perception and creativity.
**Sony Alpha (a37), Tamron macro 90mm f2.8, manual focus on full, tripod, external flash. Unedited, aside from crop.
09. Calla
I love this flower edit, done with DistressedFX on the fly. I shot this Calla lily at the oil change place with my phone. It was February, and I was attempting to leave for New Orleans for the third time in two weeks. I was so desperate to get there and find something. This flower, before I even embarked on my journey, was the first thing I “found.” What I was looking for in New Orleans exactly, I’m still not sure, but, all told, I found a lot more than I bargained for.
My plan to stay once I arrived there was foiled by understanding and learning in a very tangible way that you can’t always escape reality, and that when you love someone you’ll always return to them. My dad fell ill and that’s why I ended up coming home in the end – which I wasn’t planning to do at all…and from there my life began to unfold a chain of events that would forever change it – but not all for the bad.
**iPhone 5
08. Finding It
This cute little flower was hanging out on my cousin Gail’s porch at the farm. I shot this during a time when I felt so…overwhelmingly lost. It was a day when I simply didn’t know how to breathe without my father’s presence in my life, and was struggling to find meaning in ever leaving my room again, and when I saw this flower and spent thirty minutes photographing it and even longer playing with the DistressedFX/Mextures edit, I found a ray of meaning to get out of bed the next day: a desire to find more flowers to shoot. It was a very meaningful day because of this tiny little flower.
I found these daisies on clearance at Home Depot around mid-spring this year. This experience was something on many levels that I can’t even put into words…but this shot is visually one of my favorites because of the angle, focus and colors.
Some form of wild sage, I think. I shot these while walking in the woods somewhere in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I love these little purple flowers, and I didn’t have any super special experience for or equipment with this shot. I just love the textured edit I did with it using Mextures.
**iPhone 5. Mextures Formula Code – TWTIYIE
05. Lightroom
With this shot, I was playing with Lightroom – which, at the time, I hadn’t done for a very long time. I’d been using mobile apps and devices and hadn’t touched my computer for months (ok, truth be told, years). Here I was trying some different styles with some shots from earlier in the year, and I was especially addicted to some Lightroom presets I’d gotten from Creative Market. Mixing presets and filters with Mextures formulas and effects from other apps, like DistressedFX and Stackables, is fun and you get some pretty cool results.
I chose to include this image because I love the gradient of the colors in the edit, but when I looked back at the original post I remembered very clearly how I felt on that day and why I called it “Soul Dance.” It was all down to music – a song called “Crystallize,” by Lindsey Sterling – as my moods often are. Internally, I was having such a hard time. I remember how light and how empowered that music made me feel, and as I was editing this image whilst listening to it and was trying to imagine my spirit flying like these dandelion seeds soon would be, I titled it after the song.
Continuing with my dandelion obsession this year, this shot is one of my all time favorites. I shot this while walking a trail at Norris Dam State Park, located on the Clinch River in Campbell County, Tennessee. I was sitting down, talking on the phone with my Dad (one of the last times I ever spoke with him before his illness and death), and he was telling me he was still not feeling well. It was at that point that he was going back in to the doctors to request more blood work and I was very scared and concerned and asked if I needed to come home. He said no, he’d be ok.
I remember telling him that the sun was going down and I saw this shot I wanted to try to get while I’d been sitting on the path talking with him (this shot), and I had to go, but I’d call him later that evening when I was back at the place where I was camping. That return phone call was when I told him about my art show in Knoxville, and he was so excited about it and didn’t say a whole lot about his health the rest of the time I was on that trip. It was just a couple weeks after I returned home that he went into a diabetic coma.
Sigh. It’s sometimes very emotional for me to see how things fit together when I look back on them. I’m so grateful that I got a good shot of this. It’s funny to me now that half the dandelion is missing – half of me is missing now, too…
**Lumix GF3, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f2.8, manual focus on full, handheld. Unedited, aside from crop.
02. Invisible
A very recent edit and a new favorite, I shot this the same day that I shot the blue flower at number 10. I was still experimenting with the external flash, and decided to play with this paper white bloom that had fallen to the floor when I’d moved things around for the blue flower shoot. I love the way the shot turned out, and edited it to further blend into the lighting with Mextures and the Stackables app. One of my all time favorites of my edited shots.
My number one favorite flower image is this macro image of a rose that was in one of the many gorgeous vases that were delivered to my house the day after my Dad passed away. I suppose we all know that flowers are my favorite, they are my friends, and I photograph them more than anything else. I just absolutely love flowers and have a fascination with them at many levels. This is something, interestingly enough, that I shared in common with my Dad. I kept my sanity during the weekend before we were to plan his funeral by shooting these flowers, somewhere in my heart hoping that he was there with me, invisibly enjoying them, too.
As I was shooting this particular flower, I had one of my first spiritual experiences with my dead father, as well as my first completely overwhelming, breathtaking, soul wrenching moment of grief. I remember falling to the floor and just completely breaking down for the first time that afternoon. I began to talk to my Dad, out loud, and I remember having this revelation that got me through that night and the next morning (the funeral home, picking out the casket and all that happiness).
As I shared on the original post:
I used to think that nothing lasts forever. Now I know…the love of a father does. I feel it all around me, especially when I close my eyes, and especially when I cry…even though he is gone. What a beautiful thing.
catacosmosis 