We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joslyn Lawrence a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Joslyn, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The Song of Absolution Series was started as a collaboration over 18 year ago and is still going strong as more information comes out about trees and the way they communicate with each other.
The work was created in response to the ever-changing environment and our own relationship with the landscapes we are connected to disappearing and taking new forms. Our intention has been to create an archive of this moment in time, honoring the medicine and wisdom of sentient forests that live many centuries beyond our lifetime.

We started the series to deepen our connection to the land. As we followed our longing, the trees drew us out into the forests, and we became a vessel for their Songs.

It is not so much documentation of trees and disappearing species, but that has certainly become a part of it as the landscapes change and shift.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have been an artist since I was a child, and at my parent’s house, they still have my very first painting on the wall, which just happens to be of a tree! I studied painting and photography in college and was painting and showing my work for a long time and always had a painting studio where I lived and tried to show my work as much as possible. I got back into photography when I had my son, and have always used the camera as more of a painting tool, as opposed to having a traditional, technical approach. It drives professional photographers a bit crazy, but I love to put pigment on clear tape and put it over the lens, shoot through plastic bags, etc so that my personal work tends to look more like paintings than photography.
The work with the landscape and trees has morphed into personal explorations of the landscape and particularly figurative work as women and mothers and how we relate to what is known as Mother Earth..our bodies as the land and the land as our bodies and what landscape is on both a micro and macro level and how we are the same. This is a push into the concept that we are not separate from nature. I have also started to work with the energy and ley lines of the earth as I travel to photograph trees and feel I am being guided to make maps with my electrical body that connects me more to what the earth needs in this current state of so much change. I see myself transitioning into taking people out on art making workshops to sacred sites and creating work together that is based on the felt sense of place that we are in and communing more into how we can do things with more of a collective healing mindset, instead of thinking of ourselves as individuals and outside of the larger earthbound ecosystem.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

My journey as a creative has really been informed by my journey of personal growth. In my early years, I would paint and draw and dance to express what I could not say in words and it was never about whether it looked good or could be sold, but was more process oriented and I just knew that when I expressed myself visually I always felt better. As I grew as a person, and people related to the work, it started to support me financially and I had to find a balance between production and that creative flow we all come to love, but is sometimes hard to find. The art of practice is where I feel the balance is found and that practice can be for anyone, not just people who call themselves artists. Especially when applied to harder feelings like grief and transitional times in our lives. Moving to music, drawing simple shapes or doodles with different colors, planting things in the garden, listening to the sound of moving water and writing stream of consciousness words.. these things can all be considered creative acts and you never know what kinds of threads come out of these seemingly simple ways of expression. Nature is always changing, taking new forms and that’s true of us as well. Any way that we are inspired to document this growth is a form of art, and sometimes it can be just for you and no one else!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The collaborative series Song of Absolution was started when I was pregnant with my son and his father and I started the series together. We went through year of success once the series was created and 10 years ago went through a very painful separation and stopped making work together. Yet somehow, the powerful pull of being in nature still called to both of us as we healed from the breakup and we continued making work. The audience was still there and we kept documenting our lived through the backdrop of the landscape and forests. Over time, we came back together as business partners and co-parents, but not as life partners and still continue the series to this day, though we do not go on shooting trips together anymore, we have found a way to work together peacefully and prosperously, which to me is a real miracle and has also showed our son how to go through something difficult and come out on the other side with love still in our hearts.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.songofabsolution.com
• Instagram: @joslynlawrenceart

Image Credits

Joslyn Lawrence