‘Runaway Dreamer’, featuring Lilly Frost, was a commercial campaign created for Meadow Lane, designed to showcase a vintage sleepwear collection. We shot this project at Parramatta Lake Reserve, a place that has always felt in between worlds to me and the perfect destination to runaway to. I wanted to create a scene depicting a female character who had fled straight from her bed, with nothing but the pyjama’s on her back and a suitcase filled with her prized possessions. Vintage sleepwear has always entranced me. It holds a forgotten grace and dedication to beauty that I’ve always admired. The feelings that these pieces evoke, provided a clear blueprint for the character I wanted to build for this project. I found an old yellow suitcase at Salvos for ten dollars and filled it with hardback books and vintage toys (the essential items that sprung to mind when I imagined fleeing my own home). This project felt like a suitable time for me to explore and showcase a feeling within womanhood that I believe we all face - the sickeningly sweet remnants of girlhood that linger on the state lines of a stale violence, a rage filled insanity. The balancing act of remaining pure in a dark world, a permanent see-saw state, up and down, floating between two bodies. Face paint felt like an obvious choice to me - something so childish, lacking any real permanence, but at the same time, a very serious devotion to eternal magic and whimsy. The lamb bonnet was another stylistic choice that aided marvellously in character development as well as the desired dreamlike aesthetic. However, I believed the scuffed high top sneakers and ever present scowl reflected a worn soul, a serious and practical determination to find a better world. I never like anything to be too dark or too sweet, I am always aiming to showcase a delicate juxtaposition in my work. The murky lake water, the harsh terrain, the unforgiving nature of the wild Australian landscape, felt perfectly representative of the unknown fate and complex inner world of this character. There were bull ants below our feet, venomous creatures peering curiously at us from behind fallen branches, we scaled rocks, dragged our feet through thick swamps and found the perfect patch of grass to sit in and eat pink, sprinkled cupcakes. Aside from any narrative meaning, this harsh duality feels relevant when working with any female character.