Velvet Beneath the Breath

The smell of damp earth after a summer rain always brings me back to the feeling of velvet against my cheek. It is a heavy, humid scent, thick enough to taste, like moss pressed against the tongue. When I was small, I used to bury my face into the soft, cool centers of flowers, ignoring the tickle of pollen, searching for that hidden, secret coolness that lives deep inside the bloom. It is a place where the world stops its frantic noise. There is a specific silence there, a muffled, plush quiet that feels like being wrapped in a heavy blanket. We spend our lives rushing across the surface of things, our skin rarely brushing against the true texture of the earth. We forget that there is a center to everything, a soft, private core that waits for us to stop moving and simply lean in. If you could shrink yourself down to the size of a dewdrop, would you finally find the stillness you have been chasing?

Laria Saunders has captured this quiet intimacy in her work titled Inside the Pansy. She invites us to press our senses against the velvet heart of a flower and lose ourselves in its hidden architecture. Does the texture of this bloom feel as soft to you as it does to me?