Navigation Painting

This piece is done on gessoed hardboard and is framed with a custom, hand-built oak frame. It will come to you ready to be hung. Navigation is diagram of a voyage within a dream. It explores questions of how we navigate through life. How do we get where we're going? For travel, there are maps, GPS. For a favorite family soup, there are recipes. Birds have internal navigation. Do we? Are we guided though life by internal or external elements? I found the little bird named Estrellita at the Old Basilica de Guadalupe where a man was selling fortunes - choose one of three caged birds, he will open the cage, the chosen bird will hop out and pluck a little folded paper fortune from a box of hundreds.Can a fortune teller reveal your future? And does the past provide an element of navigation? The rectangle in the upper left of the piece is an old photograph painted over, representing memories and past events. The images are assembled in a dreamlike way. Separate events are distinguishable, but also flow together. There is a bird and wing shape motif throughout. The swirling, colorful discs (echoed in the heads of the two human figures) are nests or eggs, and also represent the circular pyramids that can be found at Tzintzuntzan, overlooking Lake Patzcuaro in Mexico. I hope the viewer will enjoy wandering through this dreamy meditative space, and contemplate their own journeys.