Quintessence

Black and white Polaroid emulsion transfers on watercolor paper, ongoing

Alchemists believed everything could be distilled to a fifth essence, the spirit that moves through earth, water, air, and fire. In this series, a figure holds tiny lights in her open hand, small fires carried like something fragile and unfinished. Each image begins as a Polaroid, then the emulsion is lifted and transferred to watercolor paper, so the image is changed in the making. I’m curious about the alchemy of creation, in art and in nature: how something takes form, and what is transformed along the way.