Pulelehua (Butterfly) Painting

There are only two kinds of artists—revolutionaries and plagiarists. – Paul Gauguin In my studio process, I discover patterns in the splendor of liquid paint as it seeps from possibility to presence. Beginning with a splash of numinous non-sense arrested by a moment of awe, I am seduced into the quest for one more glimpse of magic. I have spent glorious summers camping and rock climbing in the Sierra. Like a climber on a vertical ascent, my paintings dance that edge of will and surrender. My work reveals my reverence for the heat of sacred sensuality. I paint from that place where spirit and sex are one. The paintings are steeped in a primal feminine sensibility of passionate receptivity, of ecstatic union, of creation as birth. On the tantric tree of life, sex is the root and spirit is the flower. I believe that form follows consciousness. All that is visible appears through a refraction of the invisible, like the colors of a rainbow appearing from white light. Serving as a potential prism for this spectacle, the creative intelligence of the Universe is, I believe, at least as highly-structured and multifaceted as a crystal, as reflectively illusory and as transparently true. My painting process mirrors my respect for the direct wisdom of the lifeforce itself. I work, not with visualizing an image, but with an awareness of the invisible qualities that I wish to see –passion, brilliance, serenity, expansion. I hold these qualities in consciousness while I catch them appearing in form. I am fascinated by the idea that, in the whole universe, light is the only substance moving at a constant velocity. This says to me that light, relative to itself, is absolutely still. In meditation, as one comes into synchrony with that perfect stillness, the eyes appear to glow. I paint for that moment of radiance when a painting glows in synchrony with the stillness of its own light. Hopefully, the flow stops there. Sometimes, as I witness the spectacle of sunlight on leaves in the wind, I know that just this is enough. The existence of nature inspires me to explore the nature of existence: of the cosmos, the self, and the paint.