I have always valued art as a means of communication that offers different possibilities than verbal or written forms. 
 

As a child, I drew pictures in my journal to express my experiences. As a teenager, I drew eyes. If I was experiencing an emotional state that I couldn’t explain or understand, I would draw one of my own eyes in order to discover what I was feeling. In school, I have always doodled in margins as a means of helping me focus on lectures and to understand content. I have no formal training in art. For the most part, I am self-taught.
 

Today I work as a psychologist in a private practice. I use art therapy to help my clients. My graduate training was in the area of Imaginal Psychology, a form of depth psychology that values the soul, or deep psyche.  Although the soul is a driving force for our behavior, we sometimes are unaware of our own deep longings or we suppress them to satisfy a cultural demand. In these cases, we can benefit psychologically from bringing what is unconscious to consciousness.  Because the soul is thought to communicate through the imagination, techniques such as art-making can be used in therapy to gain insight into the soul’s yearnings. When we align our life’s activities and relationships with the deep desires of the soul, life becomes more creative and satisfying.
 

Personally, painting provides me the opportunity to explore my inner world and to release the stories that I have listened to during the day. Expressing myself through the creation of images allows me to communicate the ineffable. When I feel stuck, confused or burdened, I often explore the issue through art making. I then reflect upon the image and interact with it. I may ask myself, “What does this image need to become more comfortable? Alive? Complete?” I will make changes to the piece and then reflect again. It is a reiterative process. Many times by shifting things on canvas, I am able to shift my internal landscape. 

The art I am making today is primarily paintings in acrylic and mixed media. The subject matter is usually human faces and forms that tell a story. I prefer the stories being told to be subject to multiple interpretations, mysterious or ambivalent. In addition to people, I paint abstract images, often layered over images of people, obscuring the original form. The purpose of the abstracts is to explore feelings and problems.

My art-making began as a practice that I have used to sustain myself. Now, I bring it here to the Corner Gallery in Ukiah to share with a wider audience in the hope that it might have something to offer you, the viewer, as well.