Artistic Statement
"The finest instrument of any artist is herself. Awakening this instrument is the key to painting. This awakening is achieved by the directed use of attention. Most observers may think this attention should be directed outward toward the subject matter of the painting but this is not so. The attention must first go inward to enhance perceiving, sensing and feeling. These are the inner palette on which artistic experience is registered. This palette must be cleansed and sensitized to enable it to participate in the subtle and the new. Habitual responses must be unlearned. This is the inner method of shamanism and it lends itself well to art. This is how the artist becomes an instrument for art...by stripping down to the essentials, losing parts of herself. The end result is that the artist can step, whole, into other realms, using feeling and sensations to orient within them and obtain a clear reading of what is there. To me, an artist is not made by accumulating experience. The artist is pure perception. In terms suitable for the computer age, art is real time imaging without memory. The creative act is always in the present moment. I turn my attention to a certain place...a real place, not something surrealistic. I open myself to the feeling of that place and it impresses itself on me, sensation by sensation, perception by perception. As I capture them, the painting emerges."