Inspired by the flora of my youth: tigridia, iris, cypress, bougainvillea; and historical, photographic fae hoaxes; these portraits form an archive of a young life spent in nature. Digital, dryadical facial enhancements evolve from my human features: floral memories recalled and made virtual flesh. An echo of a pastoral youth, unburdened by a gendered masculine expectation. A link to a perhaps more truthful version of myself.

In creating them, I delve ever deeper, inwards. I unfurl the petals of a secret wild being, a reinvention process at times painful but often miraculous and affirming.

I’ve unwittingly, surprisingly, triggered notions of alternative, fluxing genders within myself, like a long dormant seed that finally begins to push out growth in newfound light. I’m asked what the flower represents in my cosmology and although the symbol is ever present, the answer doesn’t materialize easily.

Perhaps it’s an intrinsic link to the nature of my youth and to the femininity I was, for so long, denied. Or the fae shadow-self I become in my dreams: my internal, oneiric avatar. Or maybe, it’s a delicate and strange growth that tenaciously, beautifully, impossibly springs from the hard concrete and clings to life.