Category Archives: Artist statement
Reverencing Earth Opening at FVAC
Opening reception at Fuquay-Varina Arts Center on September 19, 2025. The show runs through November 1. Learn more and get directions here.
Reverencing Earth Artist Statement:
These paintings are portals of the sacred. Integrating archetypal symbols with architectural thresholds and the mandala (Sanskrit for circle) provide a framework to give expression to the beauty, bounty, and holiness of the living earth. My love of animals and the more-than-human world and grief for those we have already lost and what is threatened guides my vision to educate and inspire awe for our miraculous planet. Birds and butterflies in particular play a central role as messengers of prophecy, transformation, and hope.
My process involves researching sacred texts, mythology, indigenous ways of knowing, and science/ecology that inform both the narrative of these intricately detailed paintings and art as a spiritual practice. The four-panel series Where We Stand is Holy including is a creation-centered interpretation of the Liturgy of the Hours, reminiscent of Medieval illuminated manuscripts. Yggdrasil Tree of Life is inspired from my Swedish ancestry and Norse mythology, while the Reciprocity Mandala and Kinship Mandala are inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.
Reverencing Earth is holding a deep sense of respect, awe, and appreciation for the natural world, recognizing its intrinsic value, and our interconnectedness. It involves acknowledging our place within the web of life while inviting practices that promote conservation and advocating for environmental protection. As we navigate an uncertain future, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, climate change, and plastics inundating our waterways, how can we be a faithful witness to our changing world? How do we break open our hearts to the beauty and the sorrow then be inspired to take action to preserve life on earth? This is my quest and my prayer.
Reverence & Reverie Artist Statement
From my current exhibit, in the event that you are unable to view the works in person. See previous post for more info. Blessings and peace on this second day of Autumn.
“The love of Beauty is a reverent love for the miracle of nature and for the all-pervasive marks of divinity to be found in it; nature reveals to us in common things ‘the parable of deep things, the analogies of divinity.’”
— Umberto Eco, History of Beauty
Over the last eight years my work has evolved to reflect my deepening contemplative experience of the world around me. During the days following the events of 9/11, I felt a profound sense of oneness with all beings and had a vision after the Day of Remembrance that became the painting shown here, 911: love is the answer. A year later, during a training with Buddhist and environmentalist Joanna Macy, I had a mystical experience that was a spiritual homecoming to my interconnectedness in the web of life. These encounters with the numinous are at the heart of my work and these paintings. My intention is to create a visual scripture that communicates our innate interdependence in the web of creation regardless of our religious or spiritual path.
My recent graduate studies in the spiritual traditions of the world have given me a broader understanding of the shared symbolism that weaves itself throughout the sacred texts of our religious traditions, along with those of earth-honoring traditions. Drawing from a vast reservoir of sacred literature, I create a symbolic language that is both personal and universal to inform the narrative of my paintings. The mandala, which I began working with in 2003, has long been a vehicle for contemplation and healing in many Eastern and indigenous traditions as well in the Christian tradition, most notably by the 12th c. Abbess Hildegard von Bingen. The mandala, like the medicine wheel, provides a framework for me to weave together both religious themes and images associated with the four seasons, the four elements (earth, fire, air, and water), and the four cardinal directions as a way of connecting the viewer to the sacred that is available to us in the everyday. This reverence for the earth—or Pachamama as she is known in South America—was reinforced again for me during a pilgrimage to Peru in 2006 where I was introduced to the ancient spiritual teachings of the Andes, which inspired three paintings in this show. It has been said that in order to counter the ecological crisis we need an aesthetic revolution. My work is a contribution to this endeavor.
