Memory Palace/The View From Here

oil on canvas, 12” x 9” x 7/8”, 2018

I use mythology and religious symbolism, storytelling devices from my first discipline, Theater, and cultural traditions like Mexico’s Loteria, and animal imagery from European and Native American lore, to circle the central themes that interest me: individual stories (the Character Portraits), the relationship between religious and political power, and how art works with both (the Pietà Project and Myth & History paintings), and—in the one series of paintings outside the largely feminine perspective in my work—the Meditations on Trees, which are essentially totems of nature for urban life.

I am from Montana, nicknamed by colleagues in San Francisco who had never met anyone from the big sky. I have degrees in English Education and Theater Arts from Montana State, by way of UW. My first professional life was in the Theater, which I supported preparing grant applications for UC, San Francisco. There I had my second life, as the manager of the NIH-funded Center for AIDS Research. While there, I began teaching myself to paint, and when I left, it was for Oaxaca de Juarez, Mexico--the best art teacher on the planet. I owe my third life to Oaxaca. And my fourth to Seattle, where I am currently enrolled in the Seattle Central Apparel program.