For Felice Willat, Zen of the Land unites a visual trilogy of country people, their landscapes and lifestyles in humanist, spiritual, pictorial harmony. Willat brings a centered, thoughtful and organic approach to photography and to the living of a purposeful artists’ life. The serenity in her images is both pensive and evocative; mirroring her contemplative intellect and ebullient personality. The artist’s best works percolate with a Mandala-full of life forces that emanate from her subjects, which she shoots in situ. Her most interesting pictures linger in the mind’s eye. They move the viewer into spaces where we breathe deeper and slower- harmonizing with those who inhabit the visual world that Willat creates.
~Phil Tarley, Zen of the Land, Fabrik Magazine
Felice Willat is an award-winning travel photographer and publisher, whose images from around the world, the United States and at home in California capture the beauty of the human landscape across cultures. Willat’s photographs have been juried into Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Art, the Los Angeles Center for Photography, Photo LA, Photo Independent, TAG Gallery, the Brand Library, and numerous other venues across the United States and in London, UK and Italy. In 2015 Felice won First Prize with “Molokai Maidens” in the LarkGallery competition “Solar Spectrum´- Juror – Tony Clark, Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Artset des Lettres, Member of the Board of American Association of Museum Directors. In 2014, Felice‘s image “Climbing Cardinals” won Best in Show at Captured 2, the second annual Photography Competition at the Santa Barbara Tennis Club. Juror, Henry Rasmussen, founder and past publisher, editor and art director of B&W Magazine.
In 2009 Felice published The Quiet Between, Song of Burma, a book of photography and poems. Felice sees her camera as providing a sense of time expansion and stillness. She says, “I could capture a moment, something sacred or commonplace, an unconscious gesture, a tattered clothesline, a red plastic pitcher, or a worn prayer book. I like to leave the familiar, travel to far-away places, and find the gift of really being present. The shutter seems to click on its own when I’m fortunate enough to capture someone at one with their environment – People going about the living of their lives within their lands. My favorite shots are neither portraits nor landscapes – I call them LifeScapes.
