After spending the first half of my life in highly verbal, sometimes linear pursuits, I finally discovered my right brain.  Although there were a few peeps from it through the years, it really began calling to me when an artist friend and I started a weekly "art play" date to draw, go to galleries, paint, and craft whimsical ceramic stuff.  Suddenly I discovered that my inner voice, previously expressed through verbal modes, took on a new depth and tone.

A photographer for more than 30 years, I found that my photographic work changed with my new pursuit of art, becoming more intuitive, more emotionally evocative.

I began creating ceramic heads of Goddesses from various traditions, using their attributes to guide my interpretation of eyes, mouth, hair, expression.  From there I moved to two dimensional art using pastels, watercolor, and colored pencil to depict the universal Goddess and Goddess symbols.

Perhaps it is the nonlinear-ness of the Goddess that draws me.  She symbolizes that mystical wholistic, image-based approach to life and spiritual nature that I crave.  She is an emotional construct of deepest meaning and shared experience, a pathway to expression of my own constellation of selves and aspects.

Intense colors, abstract shapes within a realistic image,  and symbolic images characterize all my work.  I love to explore other themes and subject matter in both my art and photography: dreams, the play of light, imaginary landscapes, skies. 

When I create a piece of art, a story emerges.  Sometimes I begin with the story in mind, but more often the story emerges as part of the creation process.  The story may be literal or allegory, a question or an epiphany, a moment in time or an enduring reality.  Each creation has something to teach me.  Often I re-create the same image again and again until I can hear it speaking.  I often use my photographs as a starting point for a painting.

I am inspired by other artists, by dreams, by meditation and contemplation, by my relationships, by life itself.  Sometimes a passage in a book conjures up an image that wants to be expressed in paint, pencil, or clay.  Other ideas come from... oh, excuse me, I hear a painting calling...