Perennial
A flower for every kind of love
Ongoing series, Aug 2026–present
Project StatementA flower falls across a wall in shadow, much larger than the people standing under it. They hold each other and stay still, small beneath something that has been growing a long time.
Perennial is a series of portraits about love and the different shapes it takes. Partners. A parent and child. Friends. The love someone keeps for themselves. The love that stays after a person is gone. Each portrait holds one kind.
The flower above them is drawn. For every portrait Patricia commissions a bloom in simple line work, shaped by the story the people tell her, so the shadow that falls on them is theirs alone. A flower that comes back every spring for a love that has lasted. A bud for something just beginning. A cut stem still in bloom for a love that outlived the person.
She poses people close, holding each other: a hand in someone's hair, an arm around a waist, a cheek resting on a shoulder. The wall, the light, and the scale hold steady from one portrait to the next, so what changes is the people and the flower above them.
Portraits with commissioned botanical stencils. Minnesota. Ongoing.
About This ProjectPerennial started with a question about what love looks like when it is not romantic. Most portraits of love show couples. The other forms are harder to picture: a friendship that has lasted decades, the love someone still carries for a person who died, the love a person gives themselves. There is nothing obvious to point a camera at.
The flower solves that. Each one is drawn by a stencil artist based on what the subjects say about their relationship, then projected so its shadow falls across them. The metaphor carries what the photograph cannot say directly.
The staging holds steady from portrait to portrait. Same wall, same light, same scale, so the people and the flower above them are the only things that change.
Medium: Portrait photography with commissioned botanical stencils
Location: Minnesota
Status: Aug 2026