My intent is to show the interconnectedness of all life, the luminosity and presence manifesting through form, and the preciousness of our lives.
The process of artmaking focuses and harmonizes my awareness and is
a vehicle for expressing my internal landscape. As you view the art,
I invite you to deepen your awareness, letting these pieces serve as
portals into your own awareness and creative spirit. It is my desire
that the work be of service to others.
Art as a meditation practice has allowed creativity to flow more easily, using me to express the internal unseen experience into a manifest work. The process continues to unfold as I am working in my studio. I become so fully engaged that many hours pass unnoticed. The “I” disappears and what is left is the rhythm and motion of a body merged with the art materials. For long periods, no thinking is necessary, and there is only surrender to what is coming through. Any thinking or planning is subservient to a force that is not my own will. The art supplies themselves also have properties that create unplanned outcomes. There is interplay between the mastery of a given material, the life of the material itself, and any intention that I have. The final outcome is always a bit of a surprise. When I am mentally quiet, available to listening, an image will arrive in its entirety into my minds eye. There is an immediate knowing that this image is ripe for expression. The imagery is born from a weaving of my own personal history, as well as from being a part of and one voice from the collective wisdom. The images symbolize or abstract a message, idea, inner knowing, or a feeling. I continue to learn to trust the images, that they have something to convey. There have been a number of factors which have contributed to the kinds of images that I have used. As a child, a love of nature and of the wilderness was fostered by frequent camping and ski trips, and by summer camp experiences. As an adult, I continued by backpacking, river rafting, scuba diving, and through other outdoor sports. When I met my husband, who owned an adventure travel company, the exploration of the wilderness expanded exponentially. I have since then, traveled the world extensively and have seen the incredible beauty of most ecological zones, and the awesome magnificence of the wild animal kingdom inhabiting these places. These experiences have fostered an abiding respect for all living things, and fierce feelings about protecting them. Expressions of love for and connection with the animal kingdom are frequently used images, along with the incorporation of some natural elements, such as leaves or feathers. The Deep Ecology movement is about the realization and corresponding action to an inner wisdom, which knows that we are the plants and animals and that they are us. I am drawn to express this wisdom as best as I am able. Usually, I cast or paint a female figure as part of the art, in relation to nature, or in relation to an animal. The feminine, as a symbol, represents the birther and nurturer of life forms. The current spasm of devastation to the natural environment and to its inhabitants requires the rise of the divine feminine, not only as an image, but also as an active force in the world. When I was enrolled in the Masters of Dance degree program, I came to see the power and grace in the female form, and it’s ability to communicate. Later, I became engaged in photographing women, and now have a small library of images from which to choose for incorporation into the art. Often I use wings, winged women, feathers, and flight as symbols. I attempt to show that the transcendent is held within, and is the same as the immanent, and that we and all of life are spirit manifesting here and now. The imagery is also drawn from a background in spiritual practice and study. For many years I read everything I possibly could about a number of religions and spiritual traditions, and studied with teachers of Sufism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Along the way, and to a smaller degree, I studied earth-based traditions, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The quest was to uncover the commonality between all paths and religions, and to discover core underlying truths. Most of all, the journey was, and is, about directly experiencing the divine, deepening and stabilizing awareness, and integrating this awareness of oneness into daily living. I embarked upon a pilgrimage around the world, to visit many of the sites considered holy, to see the one truth manifesting through many forms, cultures, and religions. In my experience, I saw everywhere, a devotion for the nameless reality. It has been given many names, and there is an appearance of separation and difference, but it is the same reality/God/spirit/oneness/ consciousness. The manifestation of multitudinous forms is only the flip side, so to speak, of the vastness and nothingness out of which all things are born. The all and the nothing are only one thing/no thing and no division actually exists. Further, the apparent separate self is purely an illusion. There is no separate self, no self as we normally think of it at all. It is interesting to look back on the times when what I call ”me” disappeared completely, and all that remained was pure consciousness, identityless, not in time, beyond yet including all apparent duality. These types of experiences have not specifically been translated into art because they are of a formless nature, but I try to suggest them in my work. Creating
art has become an acutely alive way of living, a way of meditating,
and a path of transformation. It is a process of making real the life
within, and echoes my desire to make real, on a moment to moment basis,
the spiritual teachings that I feel so very grateful to have received. |
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Themes include love, unity, celebration, gratitude, and our sacred relationship
with animals and nature. The work honors widely varying religious and
spiritual paths, and
uses universal
symbols. The medium employed is eclectic, combining collage, paint, encaustic,
photographs, body casts, and other techniques. The style is figurative
and symbolic.