An Ode to Flowers

Flowers have always been at the heart of my life, and so, of course, they were at the heart of our wedding.

Wild and lush and spilling over - that is always how I have loved my flowers and myself most. So beautifully glorious that it almost hurts, so radiant and stunning and freely themselves that I cannot help but stop to stare.

There is a kind of wild abandon in the way they draped over everything, a truth to it, a loveliness that nothing else can imitate. They laid themselves out, so full of radiance, the way nothing else can be so deeply and honestly itself.

Their silky softness, delicate and elegant, juxtaposed against the very wholesome knowing that these silky odes to perfection also came from rich, deep soil, their softness born from the solidness of earth.

Now dancing in the breeze, their petals would pay homage to the wind while their impermanence whispered of that kind of beauty which only appears fleetingly just before it disappears, like a deer in the mist at dawn or a hummingbird’s wings just before it flits away.

Flowers were at the heart of my wedding because they are at the heart of me, sweeping petals speaking softly of long summer days in silk dresses and running barefoot through fields of wildflowers, idly soaking in the sun after a morning of strawberries and poetry.

These are the moments that flowers speak of, the moments I want to capture and carry home with me in a basket, only to weave them into myself one by one at night under candlelight so that I will never forget what it is the be so in love with the world.

Flowers hold this kind of beauty, the kind you want to bury into yourself, the kind you want to remember forever.

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Visit the gallery to view all available abstract floral paintings inspired by California flowers.

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Your Life is For You, So Let Yourself Shine

Amidst the throng of requests and needs that may endlessly bombard you, do not forget that YOU are the main character of YOUR movie.⁣
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As women, we are born into a legacy of being caretakers. From an early age we learn to “hold it all together,” to be selfless and giving so that those around us feel happy in our presence. We gain a sense of worth from being able to contribute to the lives of others. And as modern women we hold it together in basically every aspect of our lives - relationship, career, family, friends - striving to do it all while looking put together and beautiful. ⁣
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And, quite frankly, it’s exhausting. Seeing the world through the lens of social media perfection, we even begin to internalize that we should feel the way others look - happy all the time, always out having fun, doing something fabulous. ⁣
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But let me ask you this…⁣
Do you believe that your life is for you?⁣
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And if you do not stand up for your own pleasure and joy, who will??⁣
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I used to be so high achieving, choosing to kill myself over career and success, getting so caught up in keeping everything together that I would burn myself out and get sick. ⁣
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I wasn’t having fun, playing or truly savoring my life. I was simply trying to manage everything and hold it all together. ⁣
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But then I realized something. I realized that I am the main character of my movie, and the main character of a movie shouldn’t just manage all the feelings of the other characters. She shouldn’t try to hold the movie together. ⁣
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She should enjoy being fabulous. She should feel like a princess. She should dip her toes in cold water and take off her heels to run barefoot through a field. She should wear silk all day and drink fresh squeezed grapefruit juice for breakfast. She should feel like the most beautiful flower in the garden and be adored every single day. ⁣
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Do you feel like a queen? do you let yourself sleep in late and daydream? And if not now, when will you? Only you can grant yourself permission to blossom.

On the Theme of Strength in Softness and Why I Chose to Become a Professional Artist

A lot of people don’t know this about me and I don’t really talk about it much, but for many years I didn’t know I wanted to be an artist. I’m sure it was always a seed of a desire buried deep inside, but it certainly wasn’t part of my 5 or 10 year plan. 

I studied psychology in school and I planned to get my PhD and become a psychologist. I was always a straight A student. I was good at math and physics and things like that and I did them because I was good at them but not because I loved them. What I really loved was painting. My whole life I loved painting. I would just sit and draw for hours and although I saw no use in it, it was what I loved. 

But for many many years of my life I had this insane and fiery need to prove myself, that I was a good, giving, capable person. I didn’t feel like art was useful enough to give my life to. And I didn’t feel like it showed my talent as a person. Of course, I had no idea what it really is to be an artist and I was foolish enough not to see the incredible gift that just being and existing as an artist (or anyone for that matter) can be for the world. 

But no matter what is true, at the time I couldn’t see it. And I felt like in order to survive and take care of myself I had to have a profession, something important that people respected, something that showed my intelligence and capability. So I wanted to be a psychologist, to do highly demanding research, and help people who ”really needed help” and to make a ”difference”... and so it went... until I was burying myself in work and so stressed I was having back pain and trouble sleeping. I kept going this way, trying to prove myself to myself for years, getting into perpetually more challenging and damaging situations until finally I broke. 

Luckily for me my tolerance for pain was not so high that I wouldn’t crack. I was still sensitive enough to feel it. I still had a knowing in my body of what it was to be soft and joyful, to be playful and free of the pressures of the world. 

So after years of taking mental and emotional abuse from my jobs and my career path, I finally gave up. I gave up on the long, dull road to all of the externally prescribed achievements and finally began giving into my heart. 

“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love” (still my all time favorite rumi quote) was the guiding light and mantra that kept me going. Through one of the most painful and confusing times in my life, I let go of layer upon layer of ego, letting those parts of myself die over and over again until all the need for success and desire to prove myself was stripped away and I could finally hear my own voice over the hum of the world telling me what I should think or do or be. 

After hours and hours of therapeutic work, spiritual healing and inner reflection, I was finally ready to let myself soften into the stronger pull of what I loved. And what I found is that I was soft. Softer than I ever could have imagined. 

I found myself reflected in the petals of flowers, of silk against my cheeks, of warm sun and lazy Sundays. I found that what I wanted was simply to remember the soft way I once let the world hold me, the memory that everything could be taken care of for me if I let it. 

And I also found the strength I truly wanted, the strength to know myself amidst the throng of voice, the strength to let my own voice shine through the noise, the strength to open and blossom and be wildly soft and feminine as I truly was. 

That was when I truly began to stand in my power - the moment I allowed myself to be fully soft, softer than I felt I was supposed to be, more trusting than I had ever been taught I could be. 

My power was in letting go and allowing the world to enfold me in beauty, a beauty I could never have created by force of will or achievement. And that is why softness to me is strength. It lies in my journey and the strength it has taken me to give myself permission to be soft, to be gentle and to let myself become enfolded by beauty. 

Click to view some of Camille’s original artwork.

Strength in Softness: Learning to Tolerate Grandness

“Among the fierce and broken-hearted, softness is just as much a revolution as anything.”

Strength in softness is a theme that comes up over and over again in my work. So much of my painting process is about exploring transformation and the unfolding of the human spirit and particularly exploring this through the lens of being a woman. 

A flower opens and continues to open, gently unfolding and revealing itself through time. 

My journey has been similar in that my exploration has been about becoming aware, more and more, of the grandness within. Like a flower, I have learned to unfold myself, petal by petal, each unfoldment bringing me to fuller and fuller bloom. 

But I have also found that my willingness to bloom lies in how much softness and ease I can tolerate, and this is interesting to me. 

“Tolerate?” You wonder. 

Yes, tolerate.

For I have learned that tolerating good things can be very difficult for the human psyche.

As Marianne Williamson wrote,

“Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

And, indeed, psychology reveals that we sometimes shrink ourselves in order to not outshine our loved-ones. 

On certain topics in which those around us are limited, we make decisions early in life that we will hide ourselves out of love, and in doing so we begin to close the petals in on ourselves. 

Rather than opening and unfolding, we learn to hide and close. 

Thus, my work as an artist has very much been about opening those petals again, unveiling the veiled, and breaking free from the illusion. 

For the truth is, we cannot help others by hiding our brilliance. Only when we allow ourselves to unfold and reveal the heart of the rose, that inner brilliance within each of us, can we ever hope to walk through life as the empowered beings we are meant to be. 

Only when we rest in the sun, dusted in gold, can we finally know our true grandness. 

So this is my homage to that soft strength, that gentle power, that trust that everything is working in perfect harmony always…

…to that sweetness of resting in abundance without having to do anything. 

Dusted in Gold by Camille Selhorst

Call me by name

But do not forget 

To come crashing 

As the birds 

fly their way to heaven 

With the swiftest of wings.

You are but a single leaf

On a soft breeze,

And when your heart shatters,

Remember that

You are not broken.

For even as the world breaks,

A dream has awoken inside you.

Like a droplet of gold

in a sea of starlight,

It waits for your beckoning.

All you must do 

is know it is yours

And the hand of the divine 

Will move mountains 

At your call.

For life gives you all 

That you know you belong to -

Even as you rest,

Eyes close,

Dusted in gold

And bathed in a light 

more beautiful than the sun.

Forever Opening: What Flowers Taught Me About Living Beautifully

The garden was a place of quiet, and when I went there, all the humming discord in my mind simply fell away.

No rumbling traffic along the road or honking car horns, just birdsongs and the whisper of wind through branches.

When I sat among the flowers, reaching my fingertips to caress their leaves, I could feel the pull of their beauty, tugging me into their forgotten mysteries.

The petals of the larger flowers folded in on themselves, curling around one another like soft, silk ribbons tied in a girls hair - peonies and dahlias, wrapping their golden nectar in soft folds like a mother wrapping her arms around her child.

Other smaller plants, clear and wide-eyed in the morning sun, reached their budding heads to the sky, letting the light fill them with warmth.

And I nestled beside them in the cool shade of sweeping trees, awed by the gentle power of these magnificent life forms.

“Petals just grow,”

I thought in wonderment.

“No matter what else happens, petals just grow, slowly and steadily unfolding, each moment of opening more radiant than the one before.”

I marveled at the delicate balance required of these plants to keep reaching for their next awakening.

Soft, yet strong in their will to grow, they somehow found a way to keep forever reaching through the tiniest cracks, never giving up, even the the face of great obstacles.

Like tree roots, pushing up through great slabs of cement, a flower will always find its way through the smallest path, guided only by the faint glimmer of light beyond.

“I’d like to be like that,”

I thought to myself,

“a flower, forever opening to its next layer of beauty.”

Soft Petals & Solace in a Time of Stress

Losing myself in the petal-like leaves felt so good after the long morning.

I laid back on my couch, staring up at the banana tree above. It's big, soft leaves stretched far out over the cushions where I rested, offering shade or perhaps a place of solace for the weary worker, with whom I could definitely identify today.

Long hours of painting and mishap after mishap on my laptop had led me to give up and plop down for some rest.

“I never do this anymore,” I thought to myself. “I should do this more often.”

Staring up at the sun-tinted leaves, I was reminded of how beautiful the world could be.

As a kid it was so easy to touch that beauty without any effort at all. I would run through the fields in my parents' countryside backyard, picking mustard flowers as the ground cover of soft blue forget-me-nots clung to my socks. Oh, what a lovely time that was – so full of life and fun.

I could still hear my mom's voice calling me in for dinner, and my response, “Okay, hold on, just one more minute.” I leaned over, gathering up the last few sweet pea flowers I'd found.

Life was simple and beautiful and full of fun back then... and now, here I was, at war with my computer, spending hour after hour writing copy and editing my website, entirely out of touch with my own being.

My full bottle of water sitting just past the computer was another reminder of how I'd forgotten to nourish myself today.

But looking up at the banana leaves and the large purple painting behind them, I was reminded of the sweet and simple joy of being human.

My paintings are often a way for me to reconnect with this sense of joyful wonder – the process itself carries me into a different dimension of reality where I can languish under forget-me-nots and giant, silky petals.

I love to take a bunch of flowers and grow them larger with my brushes. I try to capture the magic I remember feeling as a kid, covered in flowers as I ran through the fields.

In a world where I was much smaller, I could imagine those flowers being larger than life, as if I could nestle under them like I nestled now under outstretched banana leaves.