My Art Story

I grew up under the big skies in rural Michigan. As a kid, I thrived on the beauty of nature around me. Vivid memories include: walking barefoot in the rain each spring; riding my Welsh pony at a gallop through the lush open summer pastures, my feet planted stand-up circus style on her broad back; still evenings watching the the sun descend through a blazing sky behind the statuesque Elm trees and the expanse of rolling fields. All of it opened me to the mystery of the creative in everything.

While I was in art school in the early sixties, I thought the creative art process was something that I guided. Now I experience it as a process that guides me.

Painting is a collaborative experience with color. I first began my dialog with color in the early eighties. For months I painted one-color paintings of each of the colors of the spectrum, using wet-on-wet watercolor technique. With little imposition on my part, the colors moved freely in the fluid medium of the water.

Each color possesses and shares a unique conscious resonance conveyed in a sensual language. I felt I was being tutored in that language. I experienced each one as sacred essence, a powerful conscious energy.

Finally I began to paint with the whole spectrum together. Within the wholeness of the Spectrum each color holds its uniqueness and simultaneously it flows and merge into its closest neighbor --- Magenta into Red, Red into Orange, Orange into Yellow, Yellow through Green into Viridian Green, the center still point. On the other side Viridian flowed into Blue, Blue into Indigo, and Indigo into Violet.

Within the magic matrix of the spectrum the colors elegantly exhibit a perfect model of holy relationship expressing authenticity, connection, mutuality and diversity. This model became a portal for me to the inner world of spiritual relationship with Self.

My apprenticeship with color was powerful time. Their presence is both intense and ephemeral. After almost two years I needed to shift and work in a way that was closer to my outer life with nature.

I returned to painting landscapes. I began using pastels for their vibrant color and earthy quality. As I painted on location, I felt a deeper sense of the energy of each place.

One day as I left my studio, I looked up in the afternoon sky and saw the waxing crescent moon hanging beautifully among the summer clouds. That moment was the beginning of series of moon paintings. In subsequent sightings, I saw the moon in a perfect sequence of the aspects of her cycle spread out a two-year period.

During those years, I discovered that the work I had done with color had initiated a new way of translating the inspirational perception into the forms that made the painting. Each time I saw a moonscape, I didn't particularly attend to the spatial elements of line, light, dark, values, etc. I would simply gaze at her magnificence with heartfelt delight and reverence, drinking in the color. The following day, I would create a clear distinct image of my experience. These images came out of my heart's color memory. I literally felt the image come from that part of my body, rather than the right hemisphere of the brain associated with spatial cognition.

This new way to store and retrieve images was distinctly different from the methods I had learned in art school. There I learned the right brain techniques: perceiving, memorizing and drawing the line, the lights and darks to create shape: then applying color as an additional pictorial element to be harmonized within the composition of the light and dark shapes.

Color carries and creates form in a sensual language of resonance understood by the heart.

During this time of landscape painting I became aware of communication from plant spirits and spirits of place. I learned to trust their language, similar to the transmissions from color and the creative muses that guide my hand to make a painting. It is a body-mind knowing, not a cognitive or mental process.

Again my paintings again began to shift. The inspirational source was no longer an external experience, like the moonscapes. Images arose directly from the moment, the interaction with the painting process. They were symbolic, dream-like images and impressionistic representations. These images felt like messages from spirits of the Earth family, its sacred places, and guiding archetypes.  These messages were the expression of inner experiences.

At the time I had met several Native American Elders and began to learn from them. Although my parents came from Germany, since birth I have lived here, close to this Land, its spirits of place, plant and animal spirits and other guiding spirits associated with this continent. I honor them, as I honor the indigenous grandfathers and grandmothers who honored those spirits before me. In this way I am Native American.

Through the experiences of vision quest, sweat lodge, and sacred pipe ceremonies, I earned the right to carry and was gifted with a sacred pipe.

That first pipe led me to, Hollis Littlecreek, a full-blooded Ahnishinabeg elder, of the Marten Clan. Hollis, then in his seventies, taught me to listen to, trust and speak from the wisdom of the heart. He encouraged me to take the role of elder. Under his guidance, I made the sacred pipe I now carry. Hollis's spirit continues with me.

Along the way I gained other skills and learning. I received a Masters in Education, a Masters in Social Work and was trained and certified as a Transformational Breath Facilitator and Trainer. I became ordained as a minister in the Congregation of Evolving Spiritual Pilgrims and certified as a Life Coach with Life on Purpose Institute.

Currently I offer Guide Service for Adventures in Soul in the following ways:

•  Counseling and Life Coaching.

•  Sacred Prayer Pipe Circles, Sweat Lodge Ceremonies, and Wilderness Quests.

•  Breath Empowerment individual sessions, groups and workshops.

•  Power of Color, Consciousness & Creativity workshops.

These experiences augment my expanding awareness of the inner spiritual reality.

The purity and holistic relationship inherent in the color spectrum expresses that spiritual reality most directly. Since 2001 the portrayal of the energy of the inner reality through color is again at the center of my artwork.

The work is currently taking two distinct forms:

• Wet-on-wet: The painting is done on wet paper. Each brush stroke is put down without hesitation or correction, guided by the collaborative creative impulse in the moment.
• Veil Painting: A real compliment to wet-on-wet, veil painting is done on dry paper stretched on a board. In this method very light washes of color are laid on the tilted surface of the paper in overlapping horizontal strokes. They are pulled by gravity into a seamless wash, from which the edges are removed, allowing the color to float free. The wash is left undisturbed until dry. Then another wash is laid down. This laying of washes continues for as many as 40 layers, very slowly revealing a form out of the layered dimensions of the light impregnated color.

The inner reality reflected outward through color continues to deepen and expand my life and my art. They frequently fill me with awe and immense gratitude. My core aspiration continues to be -to create art that is imbued with beauty, alive with color and radiant with Light.