Each of the works in my Cycle Breakers series has gone through many stages. The layers underneath look very different! Yet, there is a common thread in the process: creating from stillness, peace, and clarity then creating with bold strokes from intense emotion, and vice versa, repeat, repeat.

Breaking cycles is similar: there’s beauty, hope, and clarity behind the choice to be a cycle breaker. Yet, there’s also messy, wild, intense, confusing, and frustrating emotions to be felt while breaking free and maintaining the boundaries needed to stay free.

The artworks in this series express this duality, my heartbreak AND my hope as a cycle breaker. I hope they also bring validation, solidarity, and understanding to others who've made the beautiful and painful choice to heal from trauma.

Time is strange, isn’t it? Supposedly, it goes past then present then future. Yet, our experience of time is quite different than that. The drawings and mixed media artworks in my Ghosts of Time series reflect the complexity of time and memory.

Being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and having complex PTSD … time and memory is something I think about a lot, and struggle with. Part of me wants to forget and disconnect from my past. At the same time, remembering and believing myself is a part of me healing from my past.

Haunting memories, or pain that I carry with me into an open present and future? It’s both. When I’m drawing, I am able to bear the heaviness of my memories. When I’m drawing, I tap into the wordless. With every line, I am coming back to myself and moving through something vital and pouring something out of myself too.

There’s something so pure, expressive, and vulnerable about how bare a drawing can be, these simple movements of charcoal on a page.

In swooping, swishing,
Over, under, around,
Splish and splat,
I say what I cannot (yet)

In line, in paint, in crumple up, rip,
Rip, cut, paste, overlap, uncover, reveal …

I’m searching for something,
I’m trying, trying to name something.

You may not know what it is,
I may not yet have the words,
Together we will call it and
Call upon something raw and real,
Something magic inside
So we no longer have to feel that
Bitter taste in the mouth,
Rotten overload, without the words for it …

And in calling it by its name,
We learn how to free ourselves from it

Naming,
Calling,
Singing it out,
Dancing it out,
Doodling it out …
This is how we find the courage …

This is how we survive and then someday,
Find a way to truly live,
Raw magic, really being here …

We can and we will

No matter how big the grief, I can't help but recognize again and again this incredible fact: there is something gentle and sweet just beyond the deepest heartbreak. When I let go of judgement and cease all the watching-myself-from-the-outside and I finally allow myself to speak freely or to let my tears ring out raw and true, I feel connected to this pure, bittersweet power. In those moments, I fear nothing. There is only that one moment and a sense of oneness with the truth.

The transcendent point is the place we go when we are completely in the moment - so much so it seems that time cannot exist because there is only the present. It’s like you’re everywhere and nowhere at once because there is only this place. You are only here right where you are.

How much of what we perceive has to do with depth? The willingness to peel back layers and to look underneath? To scratch the surface, get a peek, and then keep digging deeper and deeper and deeper?

Healing feels like an ongoing process of peeling back layers and building new ones. To lift a mossy rock and dig through the dirt underneath. And to build a home where I can be free on newfound solid ground.

What moves us toward protection and care if not love? In honoring and loving my natural self, my soul, I learn how to safeguard my tenderness and the magic that is mine to wield. And this love guides me toward the people and spaces where I feel free and valued as my true self.

My hope is that in honoring and loving wild lands, tender artists, our authentic selves, this mysterious and beautiful universe, and this magical and messy planet of ours, we will learn to safeguard what is precious and sacred in each other and this world. Standing under a canopy of towering trees is humbling, freeing, incomparably special. It’s precious. So are you and so am I and so is each river and forest and so is this planet.

Having complex PTSD, I know it can be really difficult to uncover and sort through memories that have been repressed. Imagine your brain is a big house. Well, you went for years thinking there was nothing in the attic, nothing in the basement, nothing in the guest room. But over time, you start to realize that the lights were just turned off. So slowly you bring in lamps, shine more light on the rooms and start to see more and more of what had been stored in those rooms you had thought were just empty.

When I paint, I feel so engaged in the process of art-making that I'm able to access parts of myself that haven't come to the surface consciously. And reflecting on my art is very connected to how I reflect on my life and who I am as a human being. I frequently work with vibrant, bright colors. Yet I tend to make more muted colors when I'm sorting through something that feels murky or confusing.

Some of the paintings in this series have vibrant colors. Others are more subtle, with a lot of different colors mixed in, and at first glance, some might appear gray. This is similar to how we experience our emotions when there are multiple firing at once. When sadness, anger, and joy is mixed with guilt, shame, and fear, it can be difficult to discern any of these emotions. It may feel like stumbling through a musky cloud of smoke.

Ocean waves, snow-capped trees, lightning and thunder, and waterfalls: all of these terms relate to nature. The term "supernatural" usually refers to some force that defies the laws of nature. Yet, I often feel the greatest magic and spirituality through immersing myself in landscapes, observing nature.

What if the real wizardry comes from seeing the magic that's already here, within us and all around us? What can I learn about myself, my inner world, by spending time paying close attention to my surroundings, the outer world? If the creation of art and music isn't magic, what is magic? If the creation of art and music doesn't defy the laws of nature, then maybe the laws of nature have more to do with spirituality and possibility and less to do with constriction and predictability.

The paintings in this series all have to do with finding spirituality, insight, and magic (which can feel supernatural) in nature.

What does it mean to exist? What is the meaning of life? We create meaning. And at the same time, there is a vast, unlimited expanse of what we cannot see, grasp, quantify, or describe.

In this series, I seek synthesis for this duality. We don’t have to know in order to find meaning, purpose, or joy in our existence. And we can choose to remain open to what’s unknown. Often, it’s that openness that leaves enough space for magic to happen, to feel touched by something that evades description.

Fairies are mythical beings found in folklore. They’ve been cast as spirits of nature, demoted angels, demons, magical creatures, spirits of the fallen, and the origins of humankind. A fairy godmother grants a wish, transforms the ordinary into something enchanted. Fairies can be mischievous, luring the unsuspecting with glittery dust only to play a trick for their own amusement. The stories surrounding fairies mirror the dualities of existence: creation and destruction, the complications of trying to fit anything at all into rigid categories. The universe is built on paradox.

This series of works comes from trying to answer unanswerable questions. It comes from imagined conversations between a strange human (sweet child of the universe) and a woodland fairy named Existence. It comes from the notion that humans may imagine a fairy to be a tiny feminine thing because a tiny feminine thing can be overpowered, and thus, (some are convinced) can be controlled. I draw a parallel here to my own story of surviving rape as a child and young adult. I struggle with more unanswerable questions: why do people do bad things? why rape? why harm? They tried to overpower and control me while I was still growing, while I was tiny. This series is me expressing and experiencing my power as an imaginative, curious, playful, passionate, contemplative, free, and loving human being.

This series comes from the idea of the universe as an unfathomably expansive tapestry that we all weave together. It comes from an imagined species of black hole bug-bees. It comes from finding beauty, whimsy, and wisdom in contemplating the mysteries of existence. It comes from this idea: as I search for answers, I make art from the questions.