Los Angeles based artist Cecelia Webber creates flower and butterfly assemblages from hundreds of nude human form photographs.

Cecelia and I are on a similar life path, trying to comprehend why the human body is perceived as vulgar and base, rather than inspiring and beautiful.

Cecelia echoes my own words (see website)

Why are we made to feel so ashamed of the human body in Western culture and so much of the rest of the world? Isn’t the body a beautiful, wonderful thing, deserving nothing less than to be celebrated?

Sensual Damnation

When I wrote For the Birds and the Bees | The Importance of Sensuality in Our Lives, the dictionary definitions astounded me.

The definition of the beautiful word “sensual” could make the Pope blush:

1.    pertaining to, inclined to, or preoccupied with the gratification of the senses or appetites; carnal; fleshly.
2.    lacking in moral restraints; lewd or unchaste.
3.    arousing or exciting the senses or appetites.
4.    worldly; materialistic; irreligious.
5.    of or pertaining to the senses or physical sensation; sensory.
6.    pertaining to the philosophical doctrine of sensationalism.

We’re not speaking of the Bible, but of the dictionary. This negative concept of physicality is advanced by monotheism in particular, as a way of controlling our senses and debasing our very humanity.

I am so inspired by Cecelia Webber’s artistry, which takes the concept of erotic flowers that remind us of human body parts and twists it even more provocatively, showing us humans as beautiful flowers and not only peonies.

Reading Cecelia Webber’s comments about her own childhood spent wandering meadows in her small town remind me of my even smaller Midwestern town and the day I stole the peonies. Anne

See a different set of Cecelia Webber images in Private Studio