We belong here on Earth.  We are members of the raw collective of time and wild intelligence, of evolution and genetic memory.  Water which once circulated in the woolly mammoth now circulates in my body, in your body.  Feel into that!  We have such stories within us, gathered and imprinted in our body memory since the beginning of life on Earth.   It is only recently (as time goes) that we created a hierarchy with ourselves as conquerors.  This is our greatest error, for it has intellectually removed us from the collective and installed filters of forgetting.  It is my belief that as a species we are lonely and longing for a way back into our belonging.

This inspires me.  I want to reach that place inside which is deep and untrained, the place without words or labels, to speak Earth Tongue—that mother language connecting us all, from the single-celled organism to the Great Blue Whale, from the molecule to the mountain.  I want to reach that place and create from there, to see if I may translate through image the messages and meanings of the wild intelligence of Earth. 

Animals are my teachers and my kin.  Encounters with them awaken my cells and with a sharp intake of breath, I remember my belonging.  My senses awaken to wild medicine.  These paintings often express that moment of contact, the opening of the heart to sacred connections.  For some people the bridge into connection is the elements, for others it is plants.  It has always been animals for me.  What is it for you?

I have never met in flesh an African Elephant, or a Mountain Gorilla,  or a Musk Ox.  However, each of these has visited me in my studio.  The elephants bring the dust of the desert.  They fill the air with rumbling vibrations beyond my range of hearing.  They bring the deep quiet of listening.  When the gorillas come, they bathe the studio in rainbows and I stand painting in their midst.  I can see them out of the corner of my eye and when I look at them directly, they disappear. 

People have said of my paintings “You speak for the animals…”, and though that is a lovely thing to say, it never sits right with me. I would never assume to speak for the animals. I provide a threshold for them to speak for themselves.