In 2006, I was introduced to the American artist Charles Burchfield’s work and identified with his reverence for nature and anthropomorphic vision of the landscape. In 2013, I was named the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s first Artist-in-Residence. Presence is the series of photographs I made throughout the year in the landscape across from Burchfield’s former residence, now a nature preserve, in Buffalo, New York.

I began my residency studying Burchfield’s paintings and writings related to solitude. Despite my initial focus, however, what I experienced in Buffalo was a strong sense of accompaniment by the Center’s community and beyond. What emerged was a series of portraits of trees and still lifes that depict coupled saplings and intertwined vines with circular motifs.

I titled the images after creative progenitors of the environmental movement and other influences: Presence 5, Charles Burchfield; Presence 8, Wendell Berry, the activist and writer; Presence 10, Tony Bannon, Executive Director of the Burchfield Penney Art Center and a long-time mentor; and Presence 13, Josephine N. Cusimano, my grandmother, who raised me in a nearby Western New York landscape and whose love for the natural world cultivated my own.