Photography has always been my passion, now it is my voice.
This exhibit is about sharing and celebrating my evolution,
particularly over this past year while recovering from a near-death
experience. It’s about reaching 50, and making the journey
from harsh self-criticism to self-love and compassion. It’s
about coming alive, re-engaging my creative spirit, and embracing
that process through photography. These clusters of images
guide you along my journey, my process, as my heartfelt message
becomes clear. Don’t sleepwalk through life and wait
for a crisis to make a change. Live each day to the fullest,
be at Peace with your Self.
Summer of 2005 I almost died. An extremely vivid out-of-body
experience had a profound impact on me and I have come to better
appreciate
our impermanence in this world. As my life flashed before me
in crystalline detail, I had a vision of a woman in a red dress
dancing
across a field singing, “painting, painting, I just want
to paint flowers.” I told the hospital chaplain of my vision,
I rambled on about my fascination with labyrinths, and we talked
about finding “the way,” the meaning of life. Flowers,
labyrinths, pathways, blossoming—there’s a message
in here somewhere, I thought—a spiritual awakening perhaps,
a new direction, returning to my true passion—did I literally
need to paint flowers?
My recovery began when, ten days after leaving the hospital,
I spent the morning photographing flowers in my back yard. A
few
weeks later, at a Zen workshop, I started to shed some of my
scarring through my photos, while images taken on an autumn trip
to France
revealed a new depth of understanding and a renewed connection
with my creative spirit. Salt Lake City artist and author, Jeri
Parker, whose art and literary seminar I attended in France,
recently said, “Lisa’s images gently invoke a world
of abundance. However rich and diverse they are, their effect
is calming and
quieting. Cherish is a word that comes to mind.”
Ms. Winston holds a degree from Rochester Institute of Technology,
where she studied photography back in the day when black and
white film was king and toxic chemicals were used in the dark
room. Upon moving to Colorado in 1990, she studied with photographers
John Telford, Robert Glenn Ketchum and David Houser through
the Canyonlands Field Institute in Utah. In a critique one
day, Telford told her that her images were “very Zen,
and you need to understand why that is.” Fifteen years
later, in a photo workshop with John Daido Loori Roshi, at
Naropa University, she understood. But that’s another
story.
“
Our task is to flower, to come into full blossom before our time
comes to an end.” - Dr. Lauren Artress, Walking a Sacred
Path-Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool
