the artist's statement

I have always preferred to work in oil.
I am a simple painter and an actively deep muser.
I keep my method and tools simple to alleviate noise as I plumb the depths of my creative process, following the ever changing thread of color.
Intuition leads my paintings into form.
It is my nature to listen and to be led from within.


For the past 15 years I have worked with the painting knife; a simple tool that enables me to express through many layers of color and have the color remain clean and pure.
I scribe into the layers when I find myself in that space beyond words but still drawn to make a point.
There is always this urge to express.
The surface holds my love of color and my joy for the sensual and palpable richness of the paint.


After many years of full spectrum plein air painting, my interest in the painting by and for itself developed and I was drawn back into the studio. I am following my muse ever deeper into my inner process. The process of self expression is my primary interest though the paintings continue to hold reference to the nature of the landscape that surrounds me.
In the larger floral pieces I am working on now, I am using the brush and the knife, as the softening of the liquid oil was necessary to bring this petaled blooming more fully into palpable form.
I am softening and my medium is flowing in response to my own awakening in the body of a woman.

getting it right

we all begin at the beginning

open

true

and good.
and there is no end to that

But, very early on we become aware of a subtle shift, a space appears to take form between ourselves and the other. Conditioning sets roots into that space and survival begins to run the show. In spite of even the most well intentionally loving conditions, this will happen to all of us.

As we feel the separation occurring,
as our awareness of our separate self in and as our own body occurs,
we feel the pull, the tension, not to be separated.
We begin to do all we can to belong, to fit in
to stay with the other, to close the gap.
We avoid feeling this separation.

Ultimately and thankfully, because there is finally no place to go, 
we can meet the truth in our bodies.

That we can feel the separation and grow in trust to allow ourselves the experience, is the essential ground of awakening.
And individualizing, mysteriously, also brings us into the wholeness that we long for.
It is a conscious returning to the beginning of who we are.
And, lo and behold we can't make it happen.
Nor, can we keep it from happening.

I started writing what I used to call a poem prompted by my inquiry on getting it right. The inquiry and the condition arose from the fabric of my life.
Today I have more to say about separation.
I have more to say about individualizing.
I have more to say about this process of awakening and the process of reconnecting ourselves to what is always and already awake.
It is through separation, that most dreaded but illusory condition, that we become conscious of our wholeness.

We may have to lose ourselves many times and even watch ourselves do so,
to make the connection that reconnects us to the whole, consciously.


I began my conditioned life buoyed by the need to do it right. Later, of course, it grew into also needing to be right, but at such a young age as 7, being right really was not in my survival bag.

Dear Virgo ruling my first house, I no longer resist your gifts or your perfect lessons.
Dear Lilith in my first house made sure I did not succumb to someone else's pattern.
 
It took a long time for me to see this conditioning and this need among many other needs, clearly and with compassion. It took time for space to soften the edges of me to not flee from what I felt.
Conditioning still lives in me and this morning I wonder, does it live as thought or is it something else?
I could google it but it is so much more satisfying to ask myself these days.
I wonder about the form of conditioning, does it have form? No. I cannot see it or sense it.
Is it something passed down, that is not meant to be kept but to grow through, like good soil but in a backward way? Yes, poetically speaking, maybe.
Or is it like an ancient letter that keeps checking to see if I'm the right mailbox?
oh, more poetic license, yes!

When I feel the need to "get it right", it's serious.
My body responds in contraction, even panic sometimes.
Thankfully, that which is "only aware" as Adyashanti points to it, that which is kinder than thought, can hold that thought.

(hold that thought, suddenly has new meaning)

and from this moment of spacious holding,
what is not true is clearly felt and seen 
with the eyes of the heart.
The heart is the seat of our creativity.
And creativity is the seat of our wholeness.
It is how we come home to ourselves.
Whatever form creativity takes in our lives,
it will take us home.


This inquiry opened me up this morning to compassion for my limitations.
My limitations as a mother, as a wife, as a woman, as a friend can come home now, no longer needing to do it right. I am sorry for not being able to do it better. But I am relieved to see the truth. Perfectionism creates separation in me and my world and it hurts.


The drawing above is from my first week of first grade, in 1959.
My first life lesson was given form (and kept lovingly by my mother all these years). Something in my body did not forget the contraction in response to the teacher asking us to draw "what people do in the fall."

I really had no idea how to draw an answer. My mind went blank. 
And I caved in, trying to disappear in my front row seat.
I was scared not to know the right answer.
I found the solution by copying my neighbor.
Skillful, you might say! 
But the feeling inside was never addressed because I couldn't tell the truth about it. I couldn't give it a voice that I could hear.
It simply wasn't RIGHT! And I can be stubborn as hell.

My teacher gave me jobs to do that year to boost my confidence, so she surely saw what I wished to hide from.

 
That drawing revealed my life's path of learning to listen to my true self. 
My true self is the one who supports me like a best friend. 
I have painted all my adult life, but it has not been until I began to engage myself with process painting that I have been able to address those feelings which were leftover from my childhood. I'm setting those birds free.


Our living is a process of hearing our own voice, our intuition, our body, our heart and following through.


And that’s how one gets it right.


That’s how we will become the world, righted and whole.
The impulse is in each of us to follow through.
Can you feel it?

close to home

"It is critical that we feel worthy."
Flora Aube
The Heart is a Portal for Beauty and Light

And the heart is a portal for truth!
Today, I understand the truth and power of this word - critical.

It is absolutely critical that we feel worthy.

I did not feel worthy for many, many, many years.
I was too critical, of myself.
And yet I painted and I showed paintings.
I ping ponged between feeling the best and the worst.
I could not bear to see what I painted for long.
And I destroyed a lot of painting.
The painting on this postcard is from a small exhibit of my work at Lord Fairfax Community College, some time before 2006.

The name of the exhibit was "Close to Home."
I destroyed the painting, let it go to hold another painting,
because no one "wanted" it.

It is clear for me that I could not own it myself.

The woman standing at her home is me.
And today I can see she is also the goddess Lakshmi, pouring golden blessings from her hand.
And I can see and feel Hecate dressed in black even though I don't know much about her. As the asteroid Hecate she is a dark moon goddess who stands at the crossroads between the visible and invisible worlds. She can bring the need to live in day to day reality home to us.
If I had not reacted in fear to the strength she exhibited, I could have learned from the forms that I intuitively painted and felt worthy of the mirror they offered to me.

Ah, now a memory arises. I painted that painting from an old photo I saw of a local woman standing in her garden.

I forgot. 
I was trying to remember myself through her. 

It is no mistake, that I forgot 
and that I remember, through women,
who I am.

I have been able to hear my sister Flora and understand her work as my heart opens, no longer afraid of our differences or the certainty she shares in her process.
I have remembered who I am through the circle of Awakening Women Institute, led by Chameli Ardagh, no longer afraid of the multitude of forms and gifts woman embodies.
It is no mistake that I have come home again, returning to a home studio after three years of being in a group space at River District Arts.
And it is no mistake that I am writing this morning for Wild Woman Rising, a piece in response to Mel Shapcott's question/prompt - where is your heart?

My heart is close to home.
And home is family and a few friends, mountains and woods and rivers.

It is critical to feel worthy of love and beauty
then it rushes to "curl up at your feet" as Franz Kafka once wrote -
in his own way.

I am closer to home every day, in my own way, in this body.
In every moment that the gap closes, I am simply home. Period. Present.
In this awareness of the flow of life and death, I am home as life itself, as Woman.

It is critical that we feel worthy of our way of being and creating and living.
May you be home in your way.

There is work to be done and celebrated.
It is critical to know,
where is your heart?

I am back!

I am back!

I return many times in a day, many times in a night.

This morning after sitting, having fallen deep into the body with the help of gravity, I painted this watercolor. 

During this past year I have been letting go of any thing or concept or thought that no longer serves me. 

It has been frightening. 
It has been expansive. 
It has been a blessing. 

She discovered she has a tail. 
She discovered she is not so small and helpless. 
She can roar with the best of them. 
And she does. 

And she continues to paint and painting continues to be her favorite vehicle to express the inexpressible.

Woman. 
Awakening Woman. 
Not alone. 
Full of gratitude for this experience. 

Oh my, so forgiving, so receptive, so dear, so strong.