Renée Scott Artist Statement

I began taking pictures of flowers ten years ago, while working at a wildlife preserve in Texas. I had always appreciated flowers, but it was there that I started to see them in a different way. I had acres and hours to explore and I took my camera with me. At first, I took pictures of the remarkable animals: giraffes, rhinos, wolves, but soon I was taking as many of the flowers. I knew few names, but that didn't matter. I wanted to look at them all day, but that being impossible, I tried to preserve their incredible beauty.

In hindsight, I believe I was reacting to my mother's losing battle with cancer, trying to preserve her life and beauty. But this has never been forefront in my mind. I do actively want to keep the images of flowers with me, and have plastered the walls of my home with such pictures. I bring my camera on travels to warm places, searching out new colors and shapes. It is the color that catches my eye: the bolder and more saturated the better.

I have used the same camera since I took my first flower picture in Texas, an Olympus OM-1n, a 35 mm manual SLR camera. I do not digitally alter any of my photographs.

I focus on the close-up of the flower -- a headshot. Though landscapes are lovely, it is the individual personalities that I'm interested in. I've done this in a variety of places: a forest in Vermont, a hotel in Las Vegas, a yacht club in New Jersey, a desert in California, a field in Alaska. But you can't tell by looking. All you see is flower.

Renée Scott lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. Her work has been shown at:

  • Christina's Ice Cream, Inman Square, Cambridge
  • Petal and Leaf, Centre Street, Jamaica Plain
  • True Grounds, Ball Square, Somerville
  • The Wrap, Boston
  • Somerville Community Access Television
  • Somerville Open Studios
  • Somerville Museum
  • Johnny D's Uptown Restaurant and Music Club, Davis Square, Somerville
  • Stebbins Gallery, Harvard Square, Cambridge
  • Greeting cards available at Absolutely Fabulous, Inman Square, Cambridge

Photos auctioned at Save Barnegat Bay

CD and website photography, David Thorne Scott