Portfolio - Coming Home
Coming Home
Home is very much a state of mind. Whether we define this in terms of people, places or inanimate objects, it makes no difference. Home is our sanctuary. A place where we can go to for comfort, peace, or even solitude. We are greeted by our Self every time we connect to home and it is here that we begin to get a sense for who we truly are. In this sense home and Self become intrinsically intertwined; never fully being constant.
My home is a sacred place nestled in the forest just off a slightly beaten path behind my family’s house. This place is where I spent most of my childhood days hunting for frogs or crayfish, building forts in trees, stomping on skunk cabbage, or looking up and counting all the stars when night began to fall. I’ve shed some tears and revealed some of my deepest secrets with these woods. It holds my hopes, my dreams, and even my fears. In essence, my self is imprinted within this place; a sacred space I call home.
Each print is hand made using a 19th century photographic printing method called gum bichromate. This process requires multiples layers that are all hand coated to create a full colored image that is a one-of-a-kind handcrafted piece of art. Neither grounded in reality or fantasy, the soft desaturated color scheme and painterly aesthetics work together to enhance a dreamlike state of being that reveals the space in-between, where the unconscious resides. With each successive layer, I begin to see that my journey of self discovery is really a metaphor for Coming Home.
~Natalie van Sambeck