About Me

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.     

– Joseph Campbell

My name is Allison Marie Lemke, and to most of you, I am a complete stranger.  I run an online website geared toward showcasing my photography while attending Lawrence University, double majoring in Studio Art and Film Studies.

I have experience in sketching, drawing, and painting utilizing all types of different mediums (i.e. charcoal, oil pastels, chalk pastels, graphite, acrylic paint, watercolor, and oil paint) in addition to my true love of photography (primarily portrait and nature).

Since I was a toddler, nature had a way of mesmerizing me by its raw and unaltered beauty.  Nature was a place of solace and unconditional comfort.  Nature didn't judge me because of my appearance, whether or not I had straight A's in school, or how many times I slipped up and made a mistake.  Nature never bullied me, never limited or undermined my abilities, and never confined me into a societally predetermined class or rank.  Nature was my one, and only, true friend.

I have been exposed to the horrifying expectations of what everyone seems to think "success" looks like from an incredibly early age.  The cultural, societal, and religious pressures are overbearing and impossible to achieve.  Marshall McLuhan encapsulates the stress of the modern day world in one sentence:  "Our 'Age of Anxiety' is the result of trying to do today's job with yesterday's tools-with yesterday's concepts."

The goal of my art is to capture both microscopic beauty and vast landscape exquisiteness, to reflect a sense of something much bigger and much more comprehensive than us and the modernized world we live in.  I want to express and share the unfathomable beauty and energy I see and feel.

Photographs have the ability to permanently immortalize something that happened in a nanosecond.

Ideally, I would love to work for a corporation such as Animal Planet, The Discovery Channel, or National Geographics.  Sometimes we get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of - what has now become - our normal way of life, that we miss the everyday grace, serenity, and elegance of our natural environment.

Here is a sample of some of the work I have done:

"Brazenly Bold"

"Eccentrically Electric"

"Wanderlust"

"Merrily Gold"

"Peaches and Cream"