THE INVITATION SERIES

This work is largely about intuition. I am curious about the split between intuition and knowing oneself. Can we have one without the other? A number of years ago I started creating photo grids of crystals, objects, and animal totems as part of a Venn diagram drawing process in which I provided intuitive readings for others. I found it fascinating that it was so easy to tap into the energy of other people, the energy of a piece of stone, the energy of a grid, and yet feel far away from understanding what I need for myself.

As a result I began to practice the same meditation daily, allowing myself to trust the visuals that emerged. The animals in these paintings are visitors, signs, ghosts, messages. Each meditation, each painting, encourages me to come one step closer to trusting my own impulses, my own desire, and they allow me to feel safe in being disappointed with myself, while also allowing me to feel safe in making changes. The work allows me to reel in and let go, again and again, until I find connection with the person I have always been.

TRACES and THREADS

When my youngest son was four, he asked me, “Mom, you know that voice in your head? Who is that?” I suppose my work is an attempt to answer that question. I have been filling notebooks with Venn diagrams and visual lists to record things about me that define me. Under all of this is a need to connect, to feel valuable and heard, and to leave behind traces of myself.  I rely, often, on the image of an airplane and on ladders. I cannot be certain of why they appear, but my guess is that I am interested in the idea of heaven and I am scared of dying and leaving my children behind. The images that repeat themselves (bobby-pins, cherry pies, igloos, scissors, string) are all tied to the concept of home, of what it is and of how I will ever manage leaving it. 

DEAR NADINE

The work is based on a series of letters I wrote  to an architect based out of South Africa, named Nadine Engelbrect. I came across a house she designed for her parents and something about it resonated with me. I fell in love with the idea of a daughter building a dream home for her parents. It made me think about my own mom, the sacrifices and decisions she had to make, and the giant baskets full of home magazines she always had around the house. Architectural Digest, Metropolitan Home, and Dwell let her dream, even when she was de-icing the freezer and sewing all of my clothes because it was cheaper than buying them.

I have always been interested in the choices women make. I grew up watching Phil Donohue episodes about which kind of mother is better, the ones that work or the ones that stay home. I grew up watching those commercials that insisted I could bring home the bacon and still please a man. The residuals of that line of thinking still reside in my generation. I witness so many women lose themselves in what my acupuncturist once referred to as “mother’s disease.” They slowly lose their own sense of being as they morph into the role of someone they don’t even recognize, pulled in a thousand directions, fretting about perfection and happiness. Traces and Threads,  gave me room to feel all of this deeply. It provided a space to begin to imagine again, to connect with spirit and to reclaim the self I knew so well when I was three and four. I am still getting used to the idea of a house without four children in it. I am still getting used to the idea of knowing myself in a new light, one that doesn’t include volleyball games and prom dress shopping. The pace has changed and it is surprisingly, post hibernation, liberating. In all of my dreams lately, I am pregnant.