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Petaled Portraits
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: March 2024
For our March Cover Artist McCalister Russell, a confrontation with her own mortality has given her work depth and an irrepressible vitality.
Photographer McCalister Russell loves capturing Mother Nature’s beauty pageants – those from Fall’s colorful cloaks to Spring’s golden daffodils to pastoral scenes of grazing herds. She believes a camera can tell certain stories that words could never convey.
Though she’s a powerhouse today, McCalister was forced to slow down a decade ago when she was faced with a life-threatening auto-immune disease. When she was 15 years old (in 2013) she survived an Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome episode.
She says, “I had to take the time to truly slow down and smell the flowers.” She regained her strength walking through her mother’s flower garden. She beams, “It was wonderful therapy.”
On her blossom-stops, she snapped petaled portraits in perfect poses. Not only was this restorative, but it was also instructive.
“Being faced with a severe illness forces you to grow up quickly,” shared McCalister. “It took me from being an invincible teenager to appreciating life and being more aware of what others were going through in the world. I am now in touch with the fact that we take our health for granted. This made me slow down and be more in tune with others who are carrying their own load.”
Happily, McCalister experienced a full recovery. Her journey helped her realize the importance of each day. She values having close, heart-to-heart relationships with family and friends.
Over the past few years, her family brought their farm from California to North Carolina. Fortunate to be in business together, they enjoy their growing trade in quality beef and dairy products. McCalister still considers photography her avocation, but in the not-too-distant future, she hopes to develop her passion and utilize it more in collaboration with her family’s business.
She looks forward to capturing cows posing with a jaw full of cud. So, get gussied up, Bessie, you’re about to be Dairy Queen of the Month. Say Cheese!
If you’d like to purchase McCalister’s greeting cards, one of her photographs, or try some of the buttery-tender cuts of beef (a cross of full-blood Wagyu bulls and Jersey cows) from her farm, contact her at [email protected]
And while you are savoring, enjoy McCalister’s favorite Thoreau quote: “It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see.”
