Reflections on my Presentation and Meanings

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I communicate what I do and how I’ve been doing it. For the past year, maybe a year and a half, a lot of my creative energy outside of illustrating has gone into Instagram. I’ve been showing the cards I draw. Essentially, “Here is a painting I did of a plant. Here it is next to the real thing.” That is a part of what I do.

When I take these images, I hope people can see the mirroring between the living being and the card. To me, each card is like a portrait of a person. Placed next to the plant, the card takes on its energy and begins to personify itself. Those moments feel precious. I share only a small fraction of the images and videos I have. I would still take them even if I had nowhere to post them.

But over time, I realized this approach was missing the core of what I want to share. People often do not see what I see when they look at the pictures. They see a pretty image, an artistic representation of a plant, but not the relationship, the energy, or the way it can act as a mirror for reflection. The images alone, no matter how carefully composed, are only a surface.

Working with Life, Not Just Images

For me, working with plants, and increasingly all living beings, is not only about immortalizing them in art. It is about offering a shift of perspective. Working with them on a symbolic or spiritual level, even if you do not call it magic, is about finding a way to create your own symbolic system or a language. It is about discovering a personal method for building meaning in your life and within the world around you. Nature provides the material for that mirror. Patterns, associations, and symbols emerge, and they can reflect what is happening in your own life if you are attentive.

I remember once being in a very sad mood. I was walking and happened to pass a patch of St. John’s wort. It made me cry and feel better at the same time. It felt like an invitation, a helping hand reaching out from the living world. That moment is the kind of connection I try to honor and cultivate in my work. Associations matter when they are relevant to me, when they mean something to my situation, and when I notice them. That is when they are alive, and when they become part of a personal symbolic system.

As Above, So Below

This process is, in many ways, a form of “as above, so below.” But instead of drawing the “above” from the heavens or the astral realms, I offer it from the earth. The “above” becomes the living world around us: plants, fungi, insects, animals, the laws of life we inhabit. The “below” is the microcosm of our own thoughts, decisions, and the little ecosystems we build each day.

This is not a preference for nature over the cosmic or divine. It is a way to make the concept graspable. For some, the heavens and the astral are too distant, too abstract. Grounding the principle in what is tangible and immediate allows the idea to land, to be reflected upon and used.

What I Want My Work to Communicate

Ultimately, my work is about a way of seeing and engaging with life. Not just an image or a depiction of a plant. Not just a card or a deck. But a method, a practice, a lens. It is a reminder that meaning is not handed down or given. It is built. Observing, participating, and connecting with life in all its forms is how we build it.

How someone internalizes this mindset will always be subjective. There is no universal way to process these ideas. The goal is not for someone to replicate my experience or understand it exactly as I do. The goal is for them to have something to reflect upon, something that sparks their own thinking, and to see the living world as a mirror for their own life.

Meaning is built. Not given.