After months of contemplation and reading about the history of Indigenous people of Canada, especially the Algonquin people of this area where I live, the words and images poured from my heart onto the surface of this piece. It was a journey through the years of self-inquiry that has been part of my healing process, along with considering the little I know about my own ancestors. This led into the heartbreaking story of the people who were stewards of this land for time immemorial. A thread of darkness wove through my personal experience and the greater experience of the Native Peoples of this land, and, in truth, all lands of Earth at one time or another.

In my view, the thread of patriarchal influence has corrupted and tormented the soul of humanity for thousands of years. The infant in the womb represents the future – our future – and it is filled with a prayer I have for children to be raised to love and respect themselves and the beautiful earth we live upon. The woman rising from the red hand, superimposed upon the tree of light/tree of life, speaks to honoring the Divine Feminine in all of us and all of life. A new dawn is here where the voices and actions of women will be honored and even sought after.

I experience this piece as a prayer for us to reach towards each other in community and find the common threads that link us together and make us strong.

About the artist

A self-taught artist, I have been painting in oils since the early 1980s when I moved from Long Island, NY to New York City. My inspiration has come from dreams and inner visions. I exhibited my work in many galleries and alternative spaces in New York and Brooklyn in the 1980s and 90s before I moved to the Catskill Mountains in New York. There, I exhibited in Woodstock, Kingston, Stone Ridge and New Paltz.

In 2012 I moved to Canada and have made my home in the Bancroft area. In recent years, I began to work with pastels. I particularly love the play of light in nature. Light delights and inspires me with whatever image I’m working on. I still explore creating images from inner visions and I also work from photographs I take of the beautiful places I see in nature; in the woods and meadows where I walk with my dogs and on the water when I’m in my kayak.

I have shown my work at Studio 5 Gallery in Peterborough, the Art Gallery of Bancroft and A Place for the Arts in Bancroft.