I am not afraid of private parts because I think they speak to a whole public being.
I come from a time and place when a woman’s choices were teaching or nursing. I married, had children, divorced and have been separate ever since. All through those years, I painted – some really bad work, but I kept trying. I realized not oranges, not fields, nor form, but figure. I know there was something I needed, someone to find.
I moved to New Mexico 18 years ago in order to seriously seek and I have begun to find. These have been great years, painful as hell, but I have delved and plumbed and striven and my work is happening. I am coming alive and as I do, so does my painting. I am drilling down, shedding my mind, opening my memory. The work is from my heart, simply put. These days I am frightened, still, but I am willing and every day is driving me forward. I feel joyous.
The pieces represent feelings of strength, more specifically, of freedom. My whole life has been an effort to fly free and to expand what I seem to know. Femaleness is a gift, not femininity per se, but being a person, whole and female. I treasure images of my work because they are all aspects of my Self. I am the answer and the question. It all becomes the reason to try, to achieve, to see, and to be.