An Intimate Spiritual Fire
I have never used iridescent pastels before, but something changed all that. In May of 2023, a few months before my show “Entangled” was scheduled to open, I became gravely and mysteriously ill. I ended up in the hospital for eight days with pneumonia complicated by an empyema, which required surgery. It was a bizarre illness, struck like lightning out of the blue, and I was unable to do anything in the studio (and hardly anything at home) for five weeks. I felt in my bones that it had much to do with my body’s processing of a deep grief.
As I recovered I realized I wanted some way to signify, in my art, our inner world, or perhaps more precisely, our relationship to the Otherworld, which originates within us. I was exploring my relationship with my own inner landscape using visual journalling, and it seemed connected to the multi-layered cosmos. I chose iridescent pastels to convey this realm, rather like how golden halos were painted around religious figures.
In this piece the iridescent blue background is my way of conveying that this fire is of an intimate spiritual origin. I could also title this Vulnerability, or I am ready to be seen. It asks the questions: What constrains my inner fire? How bold is the fire? How strong are the cords that seem to bind it?
