Although it took me a lot of livin’ to embrace the concept of beauty at every stage, artists have depicted it since the beginning of time.  In this series, Marissa Bridge takes on the subject through the life cycle of petals, stamens, pistils, and we are privy to their rise and fall, sans vanity.  The orchid begins to age and loveliness abounds.

With many artists and photographers in my orbit, years ago I fancied myself a model.  It was an instant identity and an edifying chapter.  I was asked by a painter to sit for him, and my world was shaken the first and only time I was in his studio.  He said, “I’d rather paint you in your fifties, with more lines in your face.”

If life is like being swallowed by quicksand, I lived as if youth were the offered rescue twig.  But this artist was looking for experience, not even lines: etched emotions  that inform bone and muscular structure as the years accumulate.  With no real history or choices, I sat there without nobility or tragedy, countenance or shame, nothing of my humanity to reveal.