Lily

6×8 Mixed Media on Wood

Capturing Sunlight

8×8 Mixed Media on Wood

If my body could capture sunlight, I’d pull it all into my heart. I’d let it steep there and grow misty and fill the mystery of weak spots along the under walls of my skin. I’d lift the lattice of bones and tissue towards it, to let in more of it’s light. With my breath, I’d let the sun tango, tantalize and touch, move me to tears and stars and then let it bring me back to earth again…

Dear Universe

8×8 Mixed Media on Wood

Dear Universe, What deep trust it takes to fold back into your arms. Will you catch me if I fall? Will you be there to hold me when I can’t see where I’m going? Will you have my back even if I’m heavy with fear? Even if my trust falters or fails? If I dip backward into this great, big unknown, how much sky will I slide through before the flapping wings of your breath, my breath, will catch me and hold me?

Resolve

8×8 Mixed Media on Wood

This is the year. My year. I will dream big, grow ideas and take leaps of faith. I will do yoga everyday. I will rest when I’m tired. I will run, jump and play when I need to be re-energized. I will continue to open my heart, lead from that place and allow it to be my guiding force.

Fly

8×8 Mixed Media on Wood

I ask myself–do I really want to do this, to be this? and many times the answer is no. And then I ask myself why not? And the answer is always, always ‘because I am afraid’. Afraid I won’t be enough, good enough, smart enough, worthy enough.
From here on out, that’s not going to fly. (But I am!)

Home in the Contradiction

8×8 Mixed Media on Wood

Autumn Gold

8×10 Mixed Media on Wood

Pink Blossoms

8×10 Mixed Media on Wood

Echinacea

6×8 Mixed Media on Wood

Zinnia

8×8 Mixed Media on Wood

Bindu

8×8 Mixed Media on Wood

Bindu is a sanskrit word meaning “central point” and it’s the center place, the place in the middle where the universal, supreme consciousness resides. It’s the place within each of us where our true selves reside, where we access our unlimitedness, our bliss.
In this piece, the Bindu point in the center represented to me a stillness, a quiet, steady resolve in the center of movement. Each of us has this still, steadiness within us, despite the colorful, flooding movement of life all around us. From the point of stillness in the middlle, we can move into and shine out from in order to live within the stillness, even in the chaos of our world.

Blue Notes Mandala

6×6 Mixed Media on Wood

Flow Mandala

14×14 Mixed Media on Wood

Flow from the breath to the movement of brush on paper or lips to an instrument, giving life to new form, an extension of light. A finger print from the universe. one mark slips, slides, drips into timelessness, into a quiet calm place where it can finally become aware of itself.

Joy Mandala

14×14 Mixed Media on WoodT

This sacred circle represents the unbounded joy of our true nature. Through each step of creating this mandala, through the making marks, tracing them and cutting away that which was not needed, I had a sense of bubbling euphoria, a sense of rightness, of my spirit floating on the buoyancy of breath. It is my hope that this becomes your experience too as you gaze into the lush pinks, glowing yellows and happy, spring filled green!

Fire Swirl

4×4 Mixed Media on WoodT

Alive

8×10 Mixed Media on Wood

My body is a sacred chamber. It is clear and resonate when chimes echo against it’s walls, and yet, it is strong and steady enough to hold silence. On the outside, it’s all window and doors, on the inside, it’s crystal or diamond or gold, depending on the light. The architecture of bone and muscle align to hold the weight of universal presence and grace pours over turrets, arches, pilasters, over elbows, cheekbones, fingertips. Breath and blood flood to the corners and then recede effortlessly back to the heart. This sacred space knows what it is to be alive.

Bright Light

8×10 Mixed Media on Wood

The bright light of limitlessness is an open heart.

Never Without Support

6×8 Mixed Media on Wood

I ask myself: Can I sit with the stillness of my own heart? Can I be my own best company? Can I love and respect myself unconditionally? I fold in to find out and there in that vastness, my answer is wholly and fully, yes. I am never without support.

Rooting, Rising

8×10 Mixed Media on Wood

I hug the line that holds me that otherwise breaks me into two.
I embrace the lighted core like the rind of an orange holds together parting segments.
The juice of life’s inner love drips down and melts me into subtle awareness.
My feet flex forward and fold into the ground below me to find the pulpy, soft and sweet.
I’m a planted seed of solidity. In this boundary of a body. Ever pulsing.
I pull inward to move outward. Gathering from the ground. Growing to the sun. I strengthen shoot-legs downward. I lengthen branch arms up. I am rooting, rooting, rooting and rising back out.

Space

8×10 Mixed Media on Wood

Make space in the body, for in space there is savory and sweet relief. Relief is a feeling of release, like a river of breath unleashing over rocks and rambles that fill the body. In release there is lightness that rushes like air into the caves of being. In lightness there is warmth and the softness of love. In love there is an upward lifting of joy, like a smile flashing. In joy there is unparalleled expanse, space, relief, release, lightness, and love.

Fearless Warrior

8×8 Mixed Media on Wood

I am a fearless warrior, steady and committed to my path.
I am rooted and connected to my source and pulling and pooling all that I can into the core of my being. From that place, I can think and soar. From that place I extend back down through my feet, like an affirmation that says, ‘I am Here and I belong’. I exist on this sacred ground. From the core, I also shimmer upward and outward, beyond the periphery of my outer most limits of body. I am more than body, I am also earth and sky and the line between where I end and they begin is not as much line as it is light that blurs and blends. I am grounded and strong and yet soft and limitless, both light and dark, and I am holding both with my heart open. And I lead my life from there and I engage the world, others, my challenges and successes with this same grounded-ness, this same softness. In this way, I am completely free.

Unfurling

12×12 Mixed Media on Wood

Wishing, thinking, hoping, dreaming, teeming to shed old, worn out skin that I’ve been stuck in. There I’d be unteathered, undressed, expansive and free in front of a mirror showing only beauty and bliss (does this really exist? I’ve seen glimpses, inklings, and lapsed moments of myself in this way. In every flicker of this truth there is possibility unfurling who I am.

Spiral

8×8 Mixed Media on Wood

I spiral. From one day to the next, I am ever evolving, expanding, becoming more and more free. Every day I get to begin again, anew, a gift just waiting for me to unwrap my tightly wound conception of myself. So I get real steady and solid to my core. I draw my strength to the inside and then extend my heart to the person I know I’m meant to be.

Little Yogini~Heart

8×8 Mixed Media on Wood

Everything I need is here in the courage and freedom of my heart.

Little Yogini~Breath

8×8 Mixed Media on Wood

Everything I need is here in the adventure of my breath.