USA Projects

Painting the Poems of the Heart: An Artist Statement

I paint how my Heart experiences the world. Sometimes my Heart is ripped into a thousand jagged pieces and I wander within myself dazed, stepping on the shards, bleeding on the floor of my existence. Sometimes my Heart explodes with the brilliance of radiant light and joy, but it is all beautiful, it's all human, and everyone can relate in some way to those experiences.

I truly feel that I did not choose to be an artist. It is the thread that weaves the fabric of my life. I dream in full color and sound, I hear the trees speak of their memories in the form of song as they drop their leaves, and I recognize raw beauty even when it's not pretty… Without art there is no deep breathing, no peace.

Art for me is a dance.

I do not care what the end result will be, for me, it the actual Dance that I long for. I breathe from the ability to let go and lose myself in this dance, to allow Muse to spin me around till I am dizzy and think I am about to fall, only to be caught in the arms of Creation and stabilized again. I long to walk away from the experience totally out of breath and wondering what just happened out there on the dance floor, exhilarated and flush with excitement. I long to fall in love again and again with Creation. My muse is an amazing Lover, capable of making me feel safe to let go and allow the Brilliant Flash of Bliss to explode through me again and again and again.

Painting becomes a process of alchemy for me- a space where even the deepest darkest pain is transformed into brilliant radiant light.

Experiences leave marks. Every emotional experience for me has a physical sensation that accompanies it, and those sensations are colorized. I feel physical sensations as colors. Those marks, footprints, left behind by the emotional experience, are like color postcards collected by my Soul. I paint that postcard that was left behind.

I know as artists we are aware that color has temperature, but I actually physically feel that temperature, and will often slowly move my hand across an area of canvas that I am working on in order to feel what color wants to be there. I can feel pulsations of heat, swirls of cool air, eddy's of warmth… and then choose the colors that need to match that sensation.

For example, in the painting Echo's Mountain there is a haunting stillness for me when I look at that painting. My Soul has memory of standing on that cliff edge with the sweet winds embracing me… I can smell that wind, feel it across my skin, feel my body leaning into the wind and away from the cliff's edge, and am tempted to let go, to let go of attachments-fear-my footing, to let myself fall, or perhaps fly…It is an emotional experience, but I can tangibly feel it.

I think of inspiration like a match stick. The match is struck, flares up, and is then put to tinder. After that, the match is no longer needed. You throw the match aside and concentrate on fanning the flames it has sparked… Join me in fanning the flames of our lives…