This work is about survival. About vulnerability, chaos and resilience. It's dismantlement and repair. It's the extremity of ego and the way back home. It's an exploration of the dichotomy of being.
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This piece represents movement from the external world to the inner landscape. The open center of a mandala is said to represent consciousness, this void space was a major focal point for this work to evolve from.

FIVE is a journey of maturity, wisdom, experience, growth and acceptance. It's also a story of acknowledgement, distress, fracture and trauma.

There is a rival of dark and light in this work. You'll see soft and hard, angles and circles, masculine and feminine. It's a meeting of opposing forces and the impact they serve in both healing and expansion.

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.

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.