Artist: Carolyn Monastra

"Nature is never spent" - G. M. Hopkins

My work is influenced, in large part, by my deeply felt connections to the land. I draw from fairy tales, myths, the fragmentary space of dreams and contemporary notions of figuration to discover and create mystery in the realm of the natural world. The people and places may seem familiar, yet there is something uncanny or restless in what is being presented. As fairy tales use characters and symbols to appeal to our conscious and unconscious mind, these pictures work in a similar manner to engage the viewer on several levelsÑaesthetically, emotionally and psychologically. But, whereas fairy tales find their resolution by the last page, my photographs are intended to be fictive fragments, which invite viewers to create their own unabridged reveries.

For this exhibit with Susan Eley Fine Art, I have chosen to show selections from two related bodies of work. A primary focus for me in the series The Dominion of Trees was to carefully modulate distinctions between the natural and the perceived. Some of these images came as gifts, surprises: the reflection of the early morning sun on the surface of the lake reminded me of a 19th-century Romantic landscape. Even in my staged scenarios, this element of surprise reveals itself in perhaps grander, but equally intimate ways: the red ice house challenged me to play with the warmness of its color and the coolness of its history; the condensation on my windows pulled me from my slumber in the morning to revel in its beauty in Wonderglass.

With my current series, lovely, dark and deep, I am still interested in telling stories, but now there is no central character on which the tale turns. I have ventured deeper into the forests of Hansel and Gretel to investigate the mystique of the woods themselves. These long exposures taken at dusk depict both the seduction and the apprehension that surface during that blue hour. Objects become hazy, sounds amplified. The mind plays tricks. The world is a less certain, more mystifying, but still alluring place.