"We are part of the Earth and it is part of us...the Earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the Earth...
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.  Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."      

Exerpt from the response of Chief Seattle to a letter from the President of the United States asking to purchase their land. 1852.


From the first time I ever heard Joseph Campbell lecture on the nature of symbols and their function in our dreams, language, art and myriad other areas of life, I was hooked.  One thought led to another, building a new framework of thinking and relating to the world around me, as it was, perfect in its imperfection, conflict and brevity, so that eventually I found that I saw the visible world as a collection of symbols, a 'web' of sorts--mere representations of things that exist in a more authentic, unseen world inside myself as well as the collective unconscious.  Writing was the natural outgrowth of this blooming psychology, and from there, forms and colors were a natural progression of exploration and expression.  
     It was only when I came to the realization that the opposites that we experience in this life ( i.e. light and dark, good and evil, life and death) are merely representations of different aspects of a 'whole'  existing somewhere, that I began to gain a sort of sanity and comfort with nature and my own skin that had been missing since early childhood.  When I am painting, I can examine and explore this reality without the confines of culture and its unrelenting dogma, and it opens those places in me that are otherwise inclined to closure and atrophy.  Art is my doorway into the essential, yet unknown aspect of existence and my paintings are many times not what I intended, but a complete and pleasant surprise to me when I step back and realize that it is 'done'.
     I see painting as one way in which I can contribute to the world; first, by helping myself to realize the full extent to which we are all linked, to the earth and to one another, and hopefully then to further someone else in their own unfolding realization of their essential place in the world.