Phoenix SpiritDiva (center) at her exhibit at the Collector’s Gallery, Venice, Florida with artist Mai Yap (left) and owner Leah Sherman (right).
Today, we’d like to introduce you to Phoenix SpiritDiva.
Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My romance with Nature and Photography began while being mesmerized by watching nature programs on television, devouring big picture magazines, and standing next to my father on family vacations as he took images with his Polaroid and, later, 35 mm SLR cameras. However, the summer of my 13th birthday changed my world forever; I fell under the spell of nature’s wonder in the shadow of Yosemite National Park and while camping in Everglades National Park. Only later in high school did I come to recognize my feelings as a response to what nineteenth-century Romantics and the Hudson River School of Artists called the sublime.
Even though today I am an internationally collected, award-winning professional artist with works in more than 100 private and corporate collections, including the acquisition of 22 large works by the Cleveland Clinic-Weston and the licensing of five pieces (up to 3.4 x 5 feet) to the City of Sunrise for their new City Hall, I didn’t set out to be a photographer. However, life circumstances, or was it the Universe, kept bringing me back to it. In college, I received degrees in English, Education, and Administration, yet I ended up teaching filmmaking, TV production, journalism, yearbook, and newspaper production, as well as managing media and public relations divisions for the fourth and fifth-largest school districts in America. I won national awards in journalism and was president of the Miami chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, judging at the time the best photograph in America.
After some 20-years of experiencing a series of mid-life crises of sorts I found my way to my true calling, touching viewers deeply, with awe and wonder, through my photography and in so doing raising awareness of endangered and threatened habitats and species that we stand to lose in the natural world if we are not careful.
Finding myself stuck in the middle of a political “battle” in my career as an educator, I took a new path, founding a successful business as a coach, speaker, and author. After experiencing two divorces and the loss of my best friend—my mother—after a lifetime of overcoming cancer, I returned to my hometown, Miami, to heal myself and help my father, who was ailing. I built upon my coaching business, helping others understand and “breakthrough” the storms in their life as they grew themselves and their businesses, hosted seven radio shows, and published two CDs. Then, as my dad was nearing the end of his life, my youngest sister was doing the same. Both made their transitions about a year apart.
As a new year started, I asked myself the proverbial question with a twist: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” became “What did you use to love?” Photography instantly jumped into my mind. After walking away from filmmaking some 20 years before, I returned to photography in the digital age with new curiosity. I quickly attracted like-minded friends and mentors, joined local photography groups, and reconnected with my love of nature and wilderness, finding solace and healing. Within a short time, I entered photography contests and won top awards.
Today, some of my accomplishments include being the recipient of two month-long Artist-In-Residence programs, Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Olive Stack Gallery in Ireland; the Virtual Artist-in-Residence for the Center for Great Apes Art4Apes Exhibition; the featured artist for the first Endangered Exhibit – United Kingdom; two public art grants, nine public art awards and many other prestigious awards, including the Julia Cameron International Photography Contest, winning Best Landscape and Seascape Series and Best Overall winner for the South Florida Wildlife Center photography contest.
My works have been honored in numerous juried exhibitions and showcased in 25 solo exhibitions, including most recently, “The Spirit of This Place” (please add URL link: https://www.photographsbyphoenix.com/spiritofthisplace.html) featuring 53 works shown at the Pompano Beach Cultural Center. In 2019, I was appointed to the first Public Art and Placement Advisory Board, City of Fort Lauderdale, and I am currently serving my eighth year as president of the National League of American Pen Women-Fort Lauderdale Branch.
My works have graced national magazine covers and been featured in newspapers, magazines, and blog posts – print and online internationally. I was invited to be the first photographer to “take over” the Instagram page for the Friends of Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story. Has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
It’s been a serpentine path (along with a few sharp turns) through a sense of failure and loss physically, emotionally, fiscally, and spiritually to awaken and become the conservation photographer I am today.
With each loss, nature’s beauty has renewed, deepened, and healed my life and my spirit. It is through these eyes that I capture the soul essence of all the subjects – nature’s threatened and endangered species and habitats – that I passionately photograph today.
Being a calculated risk taker, persistence, fortitude, inner strength, positivity along with staying centered in the middle of life’s storms and creatively finding my way to the upside of uncertainty and upset has help define my character and success. A good dose of self-humor helps too, although for me it’s often been in retrospect.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As an environmental photographer I’m known for capturing the “it” moment, the “decisive moment” in nature, touching viewers deeply. Each photograph reflects the feelings I experience, arrested by the fragile beauty and wonder that is nature expressed by its light, color, texture, structure and pattern.
From colorful bugs, smaller than a fingernail’s tip, to ever changing magnificent paintings presented every morning and night for humanity’s delight, to majestic winged life and sacred trees, my painterly approach to photography has been characterized as the intersection of art and healing gorgeously capturing the soul of nature–the land and its inhabitants—with a sense of oneness and reverence for wild places.
With each photograph it is this sense of connecting with the transcendent essence of nature that I want the viewer to experience feeling transported from the outside-in to a place of mediation, peace and wonder.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.photographsbyphoenix.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phoenixspiritdiva/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phoenix.spiritdiva
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phoenix-spiritdiva-63a9b213/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/spiritdiva
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrN6fTMKO8FqVqSmkGzBF1A
- Other: https://www.therickiereport.com/2024/04/03/pompano-beach-arts-showcases-rapturous-images-of-the-natural-world-by-phoenix-the-spirit-of-this-place-featuring-some-never-before-exhibited-images-opens-friday-april-12-exhibit-continues-thr/
