what nature remembers
- caryn baumgartner
- Jun 20
- 2 min read
Not everything beautiful asks to be noticed.
Some details live in the margins—the way sunlight lands on the side of a wall, or how a shadow stretches across concrete after a long day. These aren’t moments you plan to catch. They just appear. And if you’re paying attention, they stay with you.
That’s how much of the Overstory series began—not in wilderness, but on ordinary neighborhood walks. Glimpses. Light. Texture. I’d take a photo and move on, only to realize later that something in the image was still pulling at me.
It wasn’t always obvious why.
The pull of what’s overlooked
The two pieces placed through Kevin Barry Art Advisory—now installed at The Fairmont Breakers in Long Beach—came from that same quiet place. A kind of slow noticing.
“My inspiration for both selected pieces stems from nature—revealing a hidden beauty that was always present. Capturing this essence of discovery and transformation, even in abstract form, is central to the work.”
When I look back, I realize: the beauty wasn’t hidden, really. It was just unclaimed. The kind of visual information we pass by because it doesn’t ask for our attention.
Until it does.
Memory has its own way of showing up
Nature doesn’t archive its stories in a straight line. It folds them into patterns—peeling paint, dry leaves, the edge of a worn surface. Things that show their age in a way that feels lived-in, not diminished.
I don’t paint to reproduce what I saw. I paint to stay in touch with what it felt like.
That stillness. That flicker. That strange, low-stakes intimacy between a passing moment and the part of you that noticed it.
What nature remembers isn’t always dramatic. But it’s often what lingers the longest.
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