The Story Behind Time Slips Away.

Art has this beautiful way of carrying us somewhere else. A single image—sometimes even the smallest detail—can pull us back into a place, a season, or a memory we thought we’d left behind. It becomes a thread connecting who we were, who we are, and who we’re becoming. And when we know the story behind an image, that connection often deepens.

Time Slips Away is one of those pieces for me. It’s simple, quiet, and understated, but the backstory is what brings me to it again and again.

I photographed it in my parents’ backyard. Their kitchen sun porch overlooked this same view, a row of trees that framed every family gathering and every ordinary day. It was the kind of vista you see thousands of times without truly noticing.

Oddly enough, I rarely walked down the hill myself. The lawn sloped toward a pond with a golf course behind it, but there was never a practical reason to wander down there. The beauty was something we viewed, not something we entered.

The morning I took this image, the house was empty. Completely emptied out—every object, every belonging, every trace of the life that had filled it was gone. It felt surreal to stand in a space once so vibrant and see nothing but bare rooms. My parents were gone, and soon the house would be too.

That day, I decided to explore the land in a way I never had. My dog and I walked the property with my iPhone in hand. It felt like a quiet final tribute to my dad, a way of saying goodbye not just to the house but to the years held there—years I lived with them during graduate school, years of everyday moments layered into that landscape.

I took hundreds of photographs that morning, each one a small attempt to hold onto a feeling, a season, a chapter. Then I packed my car and drove away for the last time.

Picasso once said, “A painting is not thought out and settled in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it’s finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it.”

This image continues to change for me. I will always see my parents in it—their lives, their stories, their presence. Others see something entirely different. They bring their own memories and interpretations, and the piece becomes something new for them.

But for me, Time Slips Away will always be a reminder of the quiet ending of one chapter and the beginning of another.

Would love to hear from you about what feelings or emotions you get when you see this image.

Be well….be creative,