In The Way Home, Laurie Peek transforms personal loss into a luminous meditation on remembrance, healing, and renewal. Created as a continuation of her ongoing In Lieu of Flowers series, the work navigates grief with quiet resolve, drawing on abstraction, layered imagery, and the sustaining presence of the natural world.

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Floral forms—often sourced from the artist’s own garden—become vessels for memory, resilience, and hope. Peek’s meticulous process, combining digital composites with hand-applied gilding on translucent vellum, lends each work a devotional quality while reaffirming the value of craft. The series stands as both an elegy and an affirmation, marking an evolving journey towards light, meaning, and emotional restoration.

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Laurie Peek: The Way Home is dedicated to my son Jackson and to others I have known whose funerals I was unable to attend. It is also for all those who have suffered the loss of a loved one. This work forms a second chapter in my In Lieu of Flowers series, which is both healing me and intended to help heal others.

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With this memorial project, I draw on my long-standing fascination with layers, abstraction, ambiguity and the natural world. Working with floral elements, mostly from my garden, I express gratitude for plants as ever-renewing life forms that ultimately provide sustenance for everything on the planet.

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The images are digital composites, produced as archival pigment prints on semi-translucent vellum. Hand-applied gold and silver metallic-leaf gilding on the reverse of each print creates a shimmering glow evocative of sacred art. The methodical process of rubbing in the gilding and varnishing the finished works reconnects me with the craft of film photography and ensures that each piece is unique.

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These images trace the path of my journey home.

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As my practice evolves, the images are becoming more abstract and affirmative, characterised by lighter tones and layered contrasts of black and white with colour. Honouring my losses while celebrating the memories of those who have passed has given me a renewed sense of purpose and agency. These images trace the path of my journey home.

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About

Laurie Peek is a visual artist based in Tappan, United States, with over twenty-five years of experience in photography. She holds an MFA in Photography from the Visual Studies Workshop/SUNY Buffalo and has worked as an educator, photo librarian, photojournalist, and award-winning fine artist. Peek’s photography has been widely exhibited across the United States and internationally, including at Klompching Gallery’s Fresh 2024; the International Garden Photographer of the Year 2024 at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, UK; and Photolucida’s Critical Mass 2023. Her work has been published and reviewed in print and online, including in Artdoc Magazine, Fraction Magazine, A Photo Editor, Lenscratch, and The Photo Review.

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www.lauriepeek.com