My paintings activate daily meditative practices. I create visual portals for the experience of conscious awareness. They give me access to the ultimate reality of life.

Seed Paintings, Winter Acrylic, ink, beeswax, and sheepskin on canvas. I buried the canvas in the snow and poured paint on it over many days. The result is a painting without brushstrokes that carries the marks of ice. The sheepskin creates a body on the canvas that is at the same time an omen for the comfort that sustains life and the interconnectedness of all beings in nature. The animal that is a seed. The ink and beeswax highlight the texture of the canvas and the marks of the snow. This work is a continuation of the Seed Paintings done in 2020 and an ongoing reflection on the mysterious nature of the forces of growth and life.

Seed Painting, Catalpa 22X28”, Acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 2020. One in a series of eight paintings titled "Seed Paintings." Last spring, with the social isolation and with my daughter starting to crawl then walk, I was always in nature, and I could see in detail the transformation of the plans. I followed closely and with fascination the cycles of germinating, seeding, sprouting, growing, flowering, and producing new seeds. The way that I understand this experience is that we, in general, think that we know things, but there is so much more to actually know when we experience with detail and attention the subtleties of life. I learned that experiencing material life in its living transformation transports us through spiritual life. I painted the Seed Paintings to discover how life starts to become visible into materiality. I found that the paintings were ready once they returned to nature at the beginning of the winter, where I meditated with their images and photographed them. Catalpa is a tree that we can commonly find in the streets of Ithaca, NY.

Seed Painting, Celeida 22X28”, Acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 2020 In Celeida, I expanded the understanding of what a seed is to think about the impact of an artwork that I was studying as part of my art historical research. In the artwork “Passage” (1979), the Brazilian artist Celeida Tostes created a big vat of clay in which she enclosed herself with the assistance of two of her students. She then proceeded to break the walls of the vat in an action that looked like a rebirth of the artist. I see Celeida’s “Passage” as a cultural seed for learning about the connection between ritual and pedagogy.

Seed Painting, Sereno 24X18”, Acrylic and gold leaf on canvas In Sereno I thought about all that surrounds a seed and that subtletly impacts the force of life that the seed carries. Sereno is the water that condenses over night and deposits on the plants. In Portuguese, it also means calm and tranquility, two qualities that I associate with the continuation of life and with the waiting time that a seed carries in itself.

The Original Tools, from left to right, Nipple, Sun, and Breath 8X6", Acrylic on canvas, 2020. A series of three small paintings that investigate ideas and things that can be represented with concentric circles and that are the first tools we use to survive as human beings. I’m thinking here about Lucy Lippard's book "Overlay" (1983) and her argument about images that persist over time in human culture. I continue to notice the circle within a circle in many images. Particularly, I have been considering the contemplative and meditative force of this form.