Contemporary Watercolor Artist
BIOGRAPHY
Influenced by my international experiences, I see myself as a global nomad and I am a “3rd culture kid”, this sentiment has transformed into a unique way of feeling at home in many places, emphasizing the interconnectedness we share on this planet. Religion is out for me- but I want to note that over my lifetime have attended many sacred ritiuals events. Special rituals to remember, events to never forget, celebrations around the seasons, around love and contemplative have been very potent and very rich for my life journey. I think is being in community working in harmony around a scared experience that draws me in. I appreciate being included very much, because humanity needs to realize we have our togetherness. There is something to be explored in these levels and states of unified consciousness that I’m trying to convey in the work that I make. I think there is a loss of being in touch with the sacred and the local ecology with the nature around people on their blocks. Like a longing to have a spiritual practices that wasn’t about a belief system. I want to also state that I am not a materialist.
I have been practicing Yoga for 30+ years, and meditating daily for several years as well. My quest to experience consciousness, began as a kid overseas and continues in into my appetite for research and lived experience. I grew up in Daytona Beach Florida, Washington DC, Mexico City, Mexico, Cape Town South Africa, Monterrey Mexico, Washington DC, Richmond VA (split with Munich Germany) and as an adult returning to Mexico for 2 artist residencies and my family in Guadalajara. This was not the childhood of an expat because as I was growing up absorbing life around me into my sense of self (and impactful years I absorbed cultures different than when my siblings were having impactful years of self development approx 10-14years).
In ea country I received pushback from people I met to hide that part of my identity and this has be constant through out most of my life. The difference in my life would often have people treat me different in every country, always the outsider. I learned the hard way that everyone needs to find a way to reach across the gap and connect. Id like to think we are working towards a place where we feel the full spectrum of interconnected consciousness; we are on this bright blue rock hurling through space. We have more in common than we think, and the silos we put ourselves in do more harm than good. My life has been spent living out a fair amount of time inside my head inventing worlds, and imagining ways to see the world around me differently building elaborate stories into the cities blocks and buildings around me. Those places are simultaneously my home and I was also always wanting for some perfect home to present itself, it wasn’t until I moved to Kripalu and began to have and pursue transcendent experiences more frequently and started Ashtanga Yoga did I realize that: I come home to my body.
I like the idea of Quantum Panpsychism, a particle that is not observed is not in space and time, materialism has erased meaning for us for the universe.. The access point to liminal thinking is much thinner than people realize, I think I can say this after nearly 30 decades of inner exploration starting with yoga at 14years. Reality that liminal space where flow happens and time is as meaningless, as it feels is much closer that society would have us believe. The division of reality into smaller and smaller pieces -has helped progress humanity to a point, and while strangling our ability to connect to our consciousness which has become buried under modern life, but we have conciseness and free will. We (greater humanity) have an ability to watch suffering and find no meaning in it, I think thats collective unconsciousness, like peoples attention is in the past or future but my paintings are an invitation to “be here now” and “To be present is an act of love”, (favorite quotes from Ram Dass & Jack Kornfield).
I am involved in the Dark Sky movement. The interest in the power of darkness began years ago wasn’t propelled when I was invited to participate in a Lakota Sweat Lodge. Where I experienced darkness has a transformative power, it takes place in darkness over the course of several hours.I spent an entire nights practicing Kirlian Photography with a rocket scientist for Nasa (gosh decades ago), learning about the energy that our bodies emit which can be documented.
Look at at first glance see my special interests appear as separate but these are interwoven into the way I think and I make art. I do like to remind myself of this “you can have a transformative morning meditation but your cat will still vomit on your rug”, that is to say even though my lofty intellectual explorations, I human muddling through life as a mother, wife, artist member and human, so bear with me as I continues making paintings. To create in sacred ritual and in exploring consciousness, my art tries to create a portend a vessel holding this experience for the viewer to feel in their own body, because it is a human right, no church or special swearing in ceremony is needed to realize deeper levels of awareness. I like that there is no retirement date for artists, we get to create, everyday we get a little bit older but that is the contract of life.
I am deeply interested in death (the great book end to our lives) from the vantage point of professionals in death adjacent careers, the caregivers, and the folks who survived death in near death experiences. In my 20’s I spent a day with a reincarnated monk as a guest in a Tibetan Chapel outside of Kathmandu for Losar (Lunar New Year/which is a whole sidebar realization that September October November and December are not in fact the 7, 8th, 9th and 10th months but rather the 9, 10, 11, 12th months). and it was an important shifting experience in my early 20’s. This summer I recently read the Tibetan Book of the Dead the Robert Thurman translation. I truly see consciousness as central to my work during the day and at night is awake in Lucid Dreams; the possibility that consciousness is photons delights me to no end because light has central to my work and how I perceive colors (I have a synesthesia). Perhaps the only inevitability of my life is that I became a painter. I think matter can be a host for consciousness, and my paintings contain like a consciousness field that I poured into them.
How do I create as an artist? I am always following my highest interest and reading research papers, articles, finding a class or book on the subjects I teaching myself about. Artists go beyond the veil when they’re making work in the flow state and then they bring it back and pour it into their work . We do our work, since we are one with everything the distinction between reality and imagination becomes translucent The new work that Quantum Physicists are doing around consciousness feels like it is about to interlock with the vocabulary and mapping that the internal sciences & the spiritual community have been speaking too, we need to find a way to work together on a micro and macro level. I have followed my highest interest over and over again much to the chagrin of those around me, but to the delight of my time in my studio making art,
I have showcased my art in group exhibitions across the United States recently an artist residency at Ceramica Suro, in Guadalajara Mexico. Two years ago I was accepted into a family residency at Casa Lu in Mexico City. I earned her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. I can be found outside starring at the stars during the evening or sitting in my native flower garden watching for pollinators, I live in Austin, TX, USA.
A recent quote she read from the book Georgia O’Keeffe Correspondences 1941-1949
When talking about paintings as finished for her retrospective at MOMA in 1946l talking about walking away form a painting once it is done and it lives elsewhere “…I am only an instrument- but I believe I have sent something out into the world in painting form yay wasn’t there before- and I believe it is strong enough not to be easily dismissed”
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