This is all so fascinating to me…. it’s like I spontaneously woke up one day to a world of unending imagination. Faces of creatures and otherworldly beings are constantly coming to life before my eyes.

It all started on a hike in Oregon. I will never forget the moment. I rounded the corner on a trail and all of a sudden faces appeared in the bark of the trees. And not just the “oh how cute that kind of looks like a face” kind of face. Faces complete with proportionate eyes, noses, mouths, eyebrows, and even ears. I began taking pictures and, before long, I realized if I put them into photoshop I could make dramatic art pieces from them. I started bringing them to life with highlighting and contrasting in all the right places. And what an incredible journey it’s been.

I am not trying to make anyone believe anything about these images. Sometimes people ask if they “talk” to me.

Well, yes and no. I am definitely having a co-creative experience. If I’m working on the inner shading of a nostril, for example, I swear I’ll get a strong impression of “No no that’s not how my nose looks!” And I will spontaneously answer out loud “Ok I know I know I’ll fix it!” Do I feel like my psyche is interacting with the natural world in an amazing way? Definitely. Do I feel like there are times I’m looking into the eyes of an otherworldly being? Oh absolutely. Is that what’s really happening? Who the heck knows. What is real anyway? At the end of the day there is only one thing that is ever real. Our experience.

There are actually three types of experiences I’m having in the creative process…

One: I see an image that might looks like a face so I take a picture but can’t bring it to life the way I’d like.

Two: I see an extraordinarily detailed face in a pattern, but when I get closer, it reveals itself to be merely a jumble of circles and other shapes that my psyche was merely “filling in the blanks” to make it look like a face.

Three: This is the one that really gets me. This is the rarer experience. I see a face and a feeling of incredulous awe washes over me. I have this tingling sensation… like I’m looking directly into the eyes of a being from another world. All the details are there. It is undeniable… the eyes with the detail of the pupil, the iris… eyelashes even. I shiver. These are the images I bring to life. These are the ones that touch the part of me that lives in the mystery and awe of this miraculous place.

My intent in sharing these images is to stir up those same feelings of awe in the beholder. To bring to life the knowing in each human being that the magic inherent in this world is at the core of our very being-ness.

We aren’t just connected to nature… we ARE nature. We ARE the product of nature’s incredibly powerful imagination. We are meant to live and thrive in a flow of our own, unique creative power. We owe our very existence to imagination, for if we aren’t beings sprung up from the imagination of something greater, then what are we? In my eyes, we are magicians sprung from magic herself.

-Barbara Stephan