i want to set the stage by offering some context for how the work shown here and the work of sharing the teachings might be viewed as a whole.

After 40 years of art making there have been many efforts to explain and define my work- by me, by critics, art historians and my friends.   This creative work has been consistently viewed as separate from the work I do when sharing the teachings of the elders who have shaped me. Two years ago my heart was struck by the sword of the poems of Kabir, a 15^thcentury Sufi saint and poet in northern India. The call of Kabir carried me to India and back with a sense of the past, present ,future creative work and the soul work as a whole.  

If you’re a true merchant
Keep a true store
Sweep the inner floor
And throw the garbage far
-Kabir

All of the artifacts of my creative process seem to be traces of sweeping my inner floor with a call to stay awake/aware- for me and any others who might connect with the work. The retreats and teachings are the active process of staying awake and aware.

These artworks are artifacts of stories of culture, history, ancestors and relationships that have been essential to the creation of my identity. Each piece is a step in exploration of whether identity serves or is part of what will be thrown far in order to leap into the ONE – to render attachment, desire and delusion irrelevant. That liberation seems worth the leap from identity into the arms of the Unknowable. 

Again I am reminded by Kabir:
In the heart there is a mirror
But no face shows
You will see a face
When the heart’s duality goes

Each time I enter the studio/look out my window/smell a flower/see a bird/feel the rain and wind my toes curl over the edge of an abyss.  Hopefully each time there is energy and grace for a leap.