Dojo: Place of the way
Gallery Dojo, Austin TX
October 3, 2026
Point of View
After my divorce I found myself alone in a space that had been shared. I coopted this kitchen window sill as my safe place. I wrote my thoughts and feelings, opened my mail, had my coffee. I was three floors up under the cover of luscious, safe, green from the massive tree outside. I watched, and thought, and became single again in this catbird seat. Friends would check on me here, and we’d pull another tiny chair into the nook and talk and cry and dream together. You can see this place in two other paintings, one from the point of view of other, but this POV was mine.
Echo
Maybe two years ago I was resting and watching a video from a mystic.. I suppose you could call her that. She suggested a simple meditation to connect to your guidance and I decided to try it. As I settled into to meditation I heard the word “Echoooooo” just like my sister and I had yelled it into the hills where we grew up to hear it come back to us. Then in my mind’s eye I was flown to the precipice of a large canyon, perhaps the Grand Canyon. I was standing poised at the lip of the canyon. Suddenly out of the deep a fire ball shot up like a rocket, like a Phoenix. I didn’t know exactly what that meant at that moment… but two years later I can say that much had to burn first before I started rise. It wasn’t until after the painting was finished that I saw the candle as a perfect symbol of the rising Phoenix and I think the timing is amazing!
1971
There a a very few places left that I can still visit from my childhood. My Aunt’s Victorian in Yonkers is one of them. She got married in 1971 and moved into the house when it still had a view of the Hudson. They decorated enthusiastically in the fashion of 1970, and have never redecorated it. Visiting it is like walking through a rift in time. Like so many of my paintings, the concept of time and memory are strong here.
Two of Everything
Monolith
In 2017 I made 24 paintings for a show over six months. This would have been 25.. but my energy ran out and this painting was a bit of a quantum leap. Perhaps my first extraction painting before I saw that pattern emerge.This happens each time I am really grooving on a body of work. The flow state hits maximum and the last painting usually becomes a part of the next body of work. I was thinking of femininity and domesticity and how the stove is like a monument, on it’s own, separated from it’s environment. So much association for me with purpose, comfort, value, expectation. I took the reference because of the perfect splatter of marinara left after cooking. Blood? Sauce? what’s left of the work of care, service, love? It felt poetic to have this remnant of the work also lifted out of the real space. Thoughts of being raised Italian, how I was shown love and how I learned to show it in my own time. How many sauces have I made for kitchens and relations that have slipped into the past. A rumination on my role.
The scene:
A friend comes to me in secret with her young daughter in tow. She fears her marriage is ending. She needs the sanctuary, space, and distance to begin to see what has come to pass. We cry and laugh, and my dog becomes nanny to her child. She reclaims her vulnerability by posing for me. Sometimes when you feel stripped down and raw, you can choose to lean in.