ARTIST STATEMENT

Balancing Cosmologies

Over the past 7 years, in cultures along the Amazon River in South America, and within the hilly terrain of a tiny village, Mimongo, in Gabon, i've been humbly learning traditions of healing that are ancient and alchemical.

These apprenticeships and initiations have involved learning to work with sacramental and entheogenic plant medicines, the chemistry of these substances finding current synthetic correlates in western state-of-the-art-treatments for complex trauma and addiction.   

In West Africa, the heart of Pangea and the birthplace of humanity, i was invited to partake in a Bwiti cultural and spiritual tradition of female initiation, "Mabanji-Boumba", that has survived mostly unchanged from Paleolithic times.

Comprehensions and understandings within these spiritual containers are non-verbal, ineffable, metaphorical, metaphysical and symbolic, transmitted through energetic frequency, tone, sound, and music, through individual voice and collective song.

This current body of work emerges out of these journeys into the Timeless, the non-linear, the ancient, and the collective.  These pieces lean in to the Dis-order, Dis-continuity, and In-stability of our current time through engaging in dialogue with it.

While every generation considers their challenges unique, i don't believe we as a collective humanity have ever pushed our relationship with our Earth to such extremes of disrespect, extraction, and uni-directional exploitation.

My imagery is deeply rooted in Animism, the belief in a sentient planet and in the intricate, unseen networks that connect all living beings, like the mycelial systems beneath our feet. I am inspired to find visual and symbolic language to describe and communicate ideas about interspecies communication, plant consciousness, and traditions of deep listening. 

As an artist i am self-taught, drawing on traditions of Folk Art, Outsider Art, and Art Brut.  As a clinical psychologist apprenticing within Indigenous medicine traditions, i experience the human body as a living archive, holding the stories, traumas, and wisdoms of generations.  As a scientist/researcher, i understand that we are both particle and wave.

i find artistic and psychological resonance in traditions as diverse as the inpatient psychiatric work of Dr Nise DaSilviera in Brazil and her establishment of the "Museum of Images of the Unconscious"; the emotionally purgative function of Louise Bourgeous' psychological "treatment plan" sculptures; the Surrealists's comprehension of the primary process language of dreams; and the hybrid figures and Shape-Shifting fluidity of Shamanic journeying.

My work explores the intersections of autobiography, mysticism, cultural memory, and the sacred feminine, inviting viewers to step into dialogue with science, spirituality, and myth.  In challenging conceptions of linear time, i instead embrace a multidimensional perspective that honors ancestral presence, ecological reciprocity, and the interconnected nature of life.