"Citron Field" Painting

My practice is rooted in painting as a means of navigating inner life. I began my career immersed in New York’s East Village during the 1970s and ’80s, where I painted symbolic, figurative works charged with psychological intensity and feminist sensibility. These paintings—featuring dolls, toys, animals, and human figures—emerged from a desire to give form to the hidden narratives of vulnerability, survival, and resilience.

A pivotal project, *The Secret: Art and Healing from Childhood Sexual Abuse*, marked a turning point in both my life and work. Confronting trauma directly through paint and story, I witnessed the transformative power of art as a vehicle for healing. This experience reshaped my path and informed both my studio practice and my parallel work in art therapy, where I developed programs in psychiatric and community settings.

In time, my painting evolved away from figuration toward abstraction. I became drawn to surfaces, textures, and color fields that operate in a pre-verbal register—spaces where language falls away, and mood, memory, and presence take precedence. My current monochromatic reliefs invite viewers into a contemplative exchange with shifting light and surface, echoing inner states of solitude, intimacy, and mindfulness.

Across these decades, my work has remained dedicated to the unseen and the unspeakable: to inner landscapes that resist direct narration, yet call for recognition. Whether through figuration or abstraction, my paintings seek to hold space for reflection, vulnerability, and renewal.