In Turquoise Woman, Golden Earth, Durga Puja and Efflorescence, I utilized an Amate  (ah-mah-tay) style Mexican bark cloth/paper process, I learned from papermaker artist, Lilian Bell at OSAC workshops in 1997. The beautiful tapa-like paper has roots with the Otomi Indians, as well as the ancient Mesoamerican cultures of the Aztec, and Mayan. In this series, I collaged the colorfully dyed feminine amate-style figures onto birch boards and worked to fully integrate them with additional graphic elements and oil paint. The womanly figures reveals a world of cryptic imagery; symbolic narratives of interconnectivity, with our humanity, nature, and the whole cosmos.

The oil paintings, Soul Bird, Cosmic Ocean, The Unveiling, Owl’s Palette, Mapmaking Crow and the Venusian Egg are visual explorations, narratives that ponder a variety of personal, collective, astrological and archetypal considerations.

I often started each painting with ideas centered around a circle or mandala. Many of these painting make reference to the symmetrically harmonious cyclic pattern of the planet Venus. Additional symbolic imagery is added, and evolved during the painting process to create these supernatural dream-like worlds on canvas or birch.

In the Buddha series, including Anatomy of a Buddha, The Earth is my Witness, Buddha Child, Lady Buddha, and Luminous Buddha, my initial inspiration came from attending a beginning Thangka painting class. I have often found solace in times of chaos within Buddhist contemplative philosophy. The Tibetan Dzogchen tradition especially has been a great source of comfort and inspiration when navigating crisis situations that require keeping my heart open.

From Sogyal Ripoche’s book, “The Tibetan Book of the Living And Dead”, I adopted the method of using an inspirational image, the Buddha as a form of meditation. My hope was that by using the Buddha prototypes, in an oil transfer painting series, something good might rub off.

In this Buddha series, I began first by gluing fabric with a Hindu design motif onto birch boards with gesso. I then rendered the Buddha images using an oil transfer technique with sepia colored ink. Oil paint was applied to further develop the paintings. I was especially interested in having the images look old, as if relics from antiquity.  The resulting Buddhic images are experiments in contemplation, materials and process.

Praying Figures: Anjali Series…. Anjali is Sanskrit for “divine offering.”

The four wall hangings, Moon Prayers; 1, 2, 3, 4”, respectively and Solar Corona 1: depict feminine figures worshipping with their hands overhead, at the crown chakra, in the Anjali Mudra. The colorful works are composed with hand-dyed Habotai silk and a silk/Merino wool blend of fleece roving in a fabric felting technique called Nuno. The name “nuno” is derived from a Japanese word meaning cloth.

My impetus to create these moon or solar-headed feminine figures, was sourced from a kind of consternation regarding our most recent world changes. They speak to and call for honoring our sacred relationship and community, with Nature, the Earth, and our own humanity

My inspiration for Twins came after taking a number of felt-making workshops. I wanted to explore the concept of ‘Self and Other’ using iconic life size female figures in a rather challenging felt-making experiment.

The felt-making process involved laying out carded (combed) Merino wool fibers vertically and horizontally in a series of multicolored layers. The fiber were then agitated within a matchstick mat (with a soapy solution of water) in a rubbing process that creates the individual wool fibers to migrate and interweave - forming the felted fabric.

Twins, depicts two distinctly female figures, a dynamic duo of sorts, together representing an archetypal feminine energy. Pictured is a pale pinkish vulnerable woman, whose exposed genitals are cuts in the felt fabric. She is juxtaposed by her double, an omnipresent spiritual feminine presence in shadow, whom witnesses and guides towards a consciousness of healing unity. 

Strength, Eight of Diamonds, The Horse-headed Knight, and Union are woodcut prints made with a relief printing method involving carving images into wood.

My art is informed by an archetypal orientation. In many of these woodcut prints I have found inspiration in musing upon the esoteric imagery of tarot cards; readings and study.