a note from the artist

Water descends in long, uninterrupted lines, pulled straight from the canopy to the basin below. There’s no spectacle in the fall itself. No explosion. Just persistence — gravity doing its quiet work. The cliff face is almost entirely given over to green. Moss, vines, and foliage soften what would otherwise feel severe, turning the wall into something living, receptive. The water doesn’t cut through it so much as pass alongside it, accepted rather than resisted.

Mist gathers at the base, blurring the boundary between what’s falling and what’s rising. The sound is implied more than shown — steady, enveloping, constant.

I was the first person to arrive at Sekumpul that morning. That wasn’t an accident. I spent the entire night driving to get there. Luck played a role too, and I’m grateful it was on my side.

I explored many compositions in those early hours, even standing below the falls themselves. But it was the tree that kept calling me back. Several times, the clouds opened just enough for the sun to move across the scene from left to right, catching the tree in a narrow beam of light. It was beautiful to witness — and impossible to capture.

That tree, standing alone in the presence of so much movement, gave shape to the idea I return to often in my work: comfortable isolation. Being alone in a vast space. The kind of solitude that feels expansive rather than empty. I found myself wishing I could occupy my own inner landscape with the same quiet certainty that tree occupies its place.

As I waited for the light to soften and resettle, I wondered how long the tree had been growing exactly as it had — positioning itself, year after year — to meet that brief moment of illumination each morning.

Recent science suggests a kind of sentience in forests. And sentience allows for goal-setting.

So I wondered:
What does a tree do after it reaches a goal?
And once a moment like this passes — what’s next for the tree?
What’s next for me?