Torn paper, whole worlds

Some places do not sit still long enough to be photographed honestly. The mountain rearranges the weather hourly; the sea changes its mind twice a day. So I stopped trying to capture them and started mapping them instead, with torn handmade paper, washes of maroon, and arches of gold leaf.

Collage is cartography for places you feel rather than measure. A torn edge is a cliff. A wash is weather. A sheet of gold leaf, laid over the seam where two papers meet, is that specific light that arrives after rain like an apology.

The process: photograph first, obsessively, then abandon the photographs entirely. Work from the memory of the place, not its image. The camera records the cliffs; the hand remembers the wind. Only one of those belongs on the paper.