Soon after Maria and I first met, we worked out a business arrangement. She could use the Studio Barn at Bedlam Farm for her art, and in exchange, she would help care for the Bedlam Farm animals on weekends. Maria has always loved animals, but rarely had the opportunity to care for animals like sheep or donkeys. She loved the work so much – her pockets were stuffed with carrots and apple slices – that she would sometimes cry while feeding and brushing them, not out of sadness but out of pure joy.

Too often, we shout words at animals they cannot and do not understand, then we blame them for not being like us. Maria is a person whose emotions are right on the surface, she is instinctively honest and open. I am not instinctively open, I have to work at it and learn how to do it.

From the first, I was awestruck at her connection with the donkeys, they are also intuitive creatures, they smell and sense human emotion. Maria began a dialogue with them that continues to this day, and it was a key element of my learning to love photography, because I could see them communicating in the photographs. Maria stoops down,  head-to-head. The donkeys lean into her and read her emotions, they frequently send her messages, and she messages them. These messages  often show up in her art, and I never tire of listening and watching. They are often quite powerful messages, it is for her, not me, to write about them.

I have a gift of communicating with dogs, and sometimes with donkeys. My dogs and I have always communicated through emotions, food, body language and visualizations, I seem to have always known how to do this. Red and I talk in these ways all the time.  It is a natural gift for Maria, it deepens and ripens with time. This winter, they donkeys have been struggling to survive, as have we. Too cold, too much snow and ice. This morning, for the first time in weeks, I saw Maria kneel down with Fanny, and I saw the two of them connect, listen to one another, and talk in the most spiritual and ethereal way. How lucky I am to be able to photograph it.