I made this piece during transition. It was a process of leaving behind in both the physical and mental sense.

Emotional duality was a major influence in this work. As I moved through a stage of closure and onto new expansion, the concept of the human as a container of opposing forces struck me.

We're constructed to understand emotions as singular. I wanted to explore the idea that contradicting emotional states can and do coexist in harmony. I wanted to honor the process of detachment from our innate fixation on isolated feelings.

This work represents the evolution of emotional processing through the natural upheaval our experiences offer.

There is profound healing in art and healing requires pain. For an artist, acknowledgement, acceptance and a willingness to work with pain are a part of the healing the work gifts us.

This piece has been a study of pain and healing in so many facets. It represents an integration of all parts of the Self and the journey of healing embracing that Self has required.

I intended to reflect a path of emotional and spiritual loss and recovery but physical pain wove its way in, the full gamut of pain was uncovered in this work. It was a challenging piece in that both mind & body played a role. One confronted the other, one required something of the other, one integrated with the other to create a whole.

Like most of us, my experience of pain has been complicated. Physical pain has long been a part of my life that ebbs and flows. At points, I have been with physical pain that has debilited body and spirit completely. In contrast, I have worked with emotional pain that has emerged and presented itself in physical form.

Pain is wildish. It pushes us, it forces us to see what lives in the darkest parts of ourselves. It asks us to go there and explore what hides in places we put everything we are into avoiding.

We collect and we repress pain and in that process we diminish aspects of our experience. This work represents pain and all its counterparts. It honors the growth it offers us and the pieces that rise from the graceful process of healing and repair. This piece is called the Integration of One and I'm so grateful to share the story of its making with you.
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I work with wood and fire. They're the mediums I've fallen for, they stir something wild and primitive in me.

There's nothing unnatural about these mediums. They're raw and of the earth. They call and evoke a prehistoric intuition that we've long passed by in today's landscape and I love that so very much about them.

My mandalas are all originally designed and hand drawn. I adore the process of creation, it's where the artist gets to play and piece together the bits of inspiration into something cohesive, something that makes sense.

Putting fire to wood is a completely different part of the process. It's where the deep connection to the work is forged. It's where the delicate power of these elements work harmoniously to create the vision. It takes patience and an understanding of the wood and all its oddities. Knots, grooves, softness, grains, they all require something unique.

There are imperfections and sometimes, they're not meant to be hidden or smoothed or burned down with fire. They're begging to simply be acknowledged, seen and honored. That's relatable and it connects me to the work on a soul kind of level.

These mediums aren't forgiving. There is absolutely nothing generous or repairable about them. When wood is burned, it's burned. There is no erase, paint over or undo. They require a certain kind of patience, an acceptance and an appreciation for the opportunity to recreate what we've foundationally laid down.

Mandalas are symmetry and often the simplest "mistake" requires hours upon hours of redesigning and reworking. That's the work. That's the place where they test parts of what you are. Full disclosure, even as a patient person, when I started working with these mediums, I lost my cool over a flame meets pine mishap on more than one occasion. But you learn to chill, to laugh, to step back, take a sip of matcha and dance your way around it.

Fire and wood have taught me a lot. The beauty of patient creation, the power of detachment and the glorious destruction of expectation, those are life things. At the end of the day, they all come back to the inherent wisdom nature has to offer. When we take the time to slow, to smell and to breathe we see, it all ends up exactly as it's meant to. There's a graceful peace in that knowing. Just show up for the work, honor the medium and trust, out of the fire, the rest will be born.

Labour of love. This piece is exactly that to me, so much so that I decided to hold on to it, which is an odd choice for an artist. When we create it's with the understanding that we are a medium for the work. The work is of us but not. It has a purpose in the world, a message, something that is meant for someone and something else. It's like a contractual agreement every artist signs. It makes detachment from our creations easier because often, when heart, soul, and a season of our lives go wholly into the work, attachment is a natural response.

This piece symbolizes a deep awakening of the unconscious part of the psyche to me. It is precisely as named, Portrait of the Shadow. It's a daily reminder that what lives in depths is what inspires my work and my writing. It's where the raw and often hard to see and even more difficult to honor aspects of ourselves reveal themselves. It's a constant reminder that when we reject the dark, creativity dies and a part of the human experience goes with it.

I don't believe (and firmly reject) "love & lighting" away the most powerful and stirring parts of the things we encounter in this life. The vastness we encompass as humans with a broad spectrum of emotions, the good, the bad and the trauma we have endured and lived all deserve a place at the table.
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You'll notice this piece has a lot of shaded areas representing the shadow. In juxtaposition, there is a lot of light. It's meant to express duality and the meeting of both these aspects of the conscious and unconscious aspects of both inner Self and ego.

2018 was a year of stepping wholly and completly into Self for me. In that process there was a lot of embracing, a lot of rejecting, a lot of putting it all out on the table and acknowledging what needed to stay and what needed to go.

Five years ago this year, I experienced a major health crisis where recovery was uncertain. Every day since February 28th 2014 has been different for me. My life and every single thing about the way I live it, changed that day.

The past five years have been an uncovering and understanding of the trauma (which I think is a life long process) and a journey of healing in both mind and body. It has been a process of complete psyche dismantling and reconstruction. Nothing but the core essence of who I am has stayed the same and reconnecting to that essence, has been a journey in itself.

2018 felt like the year before this five year anniversary that I needed, in every way possible, to silence the external noise and wholly align with purpose. I needed to construct a deeper meaning and connection to the work I put into this world.

Last February, in one night, I burnt it all down. I called out a business that didn't creatively fulfill me. I acknowledged people that were in my life to show and reflect aspects of myself I needed to see and work with. And, in a heart to heart with the person that means the most to me in this life, I outlined exactly where I desired to go and how I intended to get there.

It felt like I'd shed the final parts and pieces of a person I'd long unrecognized but was continuing to carry. It felt like finally, after over a decade of rejecting the creative life and my inner artist, I'd come home.

Not only had I come home, I was finally prepared to do it from a space of enoughness. From releasing that plaguing weight every artist has carried at some point. Finally, the creative life and the way every part of who I was needed to live, was enough.

Pictured above is some of the work that erupted from this enoughness and the creative expansion I allowed into my life last year.

I wrote a book of poetry and prose that will be published later this year, I showed my work at a major juried exhibition, I wrote articles that were published and most of all, best of all, I knew my skin. I embraced the truth in my bones and I stopped chasing things not meant for me.

What I released needed to go but it was there for a purpose, for a season. It taught me things that have made me a better artist, a more complete human and connected to a type of spirituality that is inclusive and gifts me immense gratitude for the work, stories and resilience of those embracing exactly who and what they are.

I see that now. I know it with every part of an integrated whole I have been rebuilding for the past five years. Life wanders and takes us down the paths we need to go, I believe that.
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Today, a little over a month away from that five year anniversary, I am so grateful to simply trust and nurture the creative process. My work flows from that place, creativity is of the wild and I'm not here to control, suppress or force it. I'm just here to express it and that feels like the purpose I spent so many years seeking. It feels, like enough.