Winged Dreamer

Winged DreamerBetween Worlds: A Mystical Journey When I was just 8 years old, my mother took me to England, where we discovered whimsical flower fairy cards in a little shop in Surrey. We also found some beautifully decoupaged onto old English slate roof tiles. The artist was Cicely Mary Barker, the illustrator who created the famous Flower Fairies in the shape of ethereal smiling children with butterfly wings. I decorated my bedroom with these mystical fairies and

Between Worlds: A Mystical Journey

When I was just 8 years old, my mother took me to England, where we discovered whimsical flower fairy cards in a little shop in Surrey. We also found some beautifully decoupaged onto old English slate roof tiles. The artist was Cicely Mary Barker, the illustrator who created the famous Flower Fairies in the shape of ethereal smiling children with butterfly wings. 

I decorated my bedroom with these mystical fairies and dreamt I could be one living in this floral fantasy. When I had my daughter, they adorned her room as a child. Now, they have been passed down to her daughter, even having a flower fairy-themed birthday party. Those cards, now treasures worn soft by time, had planted a seed in me long ago: a yearning for realms beyond the ordinary, for places where the veil between reality and fantasy thins.

Water became my gateway. I’ve always been drawn to its mystery—the way it ripples and hides, inviting questions about what lies beneath. When I first slipped my camera into its Professional Underwater Housing, I felt a thrill akin to those childhood dreams. Suddenly, I could cross that threshold. My daughters became my muses. Together, we ventured into mountain lakes kissed by mist, Florida’s crystal springs teeming with secrets, and even the familiar depths of my swimming pool turned portal. Beneath the surface, I found my "in-between"—a world I call Between Worlds.

Set in an underwater world, ethereal beauties are entangled with forests, sea creatures, and vibrant floral blooms. These whimsical and playful images tell a story of longing for a world full of beauty, wonder, and love. This world I call the in-between, or Between Worlds.

These images are more than photographs; they are stories woven from longing. Each frame captures a moment of wonder, a glimpse of a world where beauty reigns untamed, where love is as boundless as the water itself. Here, my childhood fairies find their echo—not bound to paper, but alive in the fluidity of this underwater dreamscape. Between Worlds is my ode to that eight-year-old girl who believed in magic, to the mother who passed it down, and to the artist who now dives deep to bring it to life.

Erika Masterson