“ I am currently involved in a co-creative process with Mexican bark paper to produce a series of images, “The Spirits in the Wood.” This collection documents my healing journey.

The role of the arts in healing is presently receiving focused attention by both arts and medical communities. Pre-Columbian bark paper played an important role in society, used in religious ceremonies as offerings to the ‘gods’ as tribute to the state, for hieroglyphic books or codices, it is still used in local shamanic practice, for healing.

My work employs this bark with its attendant healing symbolism. “The spirits” are drawn out of the paper using an attunement technique recommended by daVinci, Blake, and Ernst; and documented by painter Ithell Colquhoun (The Mantic Stain, 1949) of allowing a seemingly random stain (here in the bark) to suggest every manner of “fantastic and magical form. It is a reverie, a concentration, and a relaxation...a way of stimulating the inner senses to awaken to their contents...”

A ‘visual conversation,’ my mark making involves caran d’aches, water, and gouache pigments as well as the naturally occurring ‘mantic’ forms. Although the images which emerge are deeply personal, they reflect a microcosmic/macrocosmic content and relatedness; a source of healing.”