Come Closer....See What I See...
I've known since childhood that I look at the world differently. I didn't learn how to do it or consciously develop it. It's simply the way I see. I look beneath the surface of things, into people, situations, my surroundings, and my own life, sensing what is there beneath the visible. When I was young, speaking about what I saw often got me into trouble because the people around me didn't always want to hear it. But I never questioned the seeing itself. It was simply how I experienced the world.
What I hadn't recognized until now was how much the impulse to share that seeing has been underneath everything I've done.
I see it in my paintings, where I've spent years giving form to things that came to me from beyond the visible. I see it in the people I worked with as a trainer, where I often recognized the strength, longing and possibility in someone before they had found it in themselves. I see it in Soul Portraits, where another person's inner world becomes visible on canvas. I see it in the textiles, where everything I had learned about the unseen—about the needs for safety, comfort, love and the simple experience of being held—found its way into something that could actually be felt against the body. I see it in my writing, where following a thought often brings something hidden into view, and then it finds its way onto the page.
It's all the same impulse.
I see something, and I want someone else to come closer and look.
Not so they see exactly what I see. More so they have the chance to see something they might not have seen otherwise. Maybe it opens something in them. Maybe it changes the way they look at themselves, or at the world around them. Maybe it simply brings them into contact with something beautiful or unfamiliar that expands their experience of living.
I think this is why I've struggled so much when people don't respond to my work. For a long time I thought the pain was about wanting people to buy it or recognize what I had made, but it goes deeper than that. The impulse behind making, no matter the form, was always to share an experience of seeing. When no one seemed to notice, it felt like something that mattered deeply hadn’t found anywhere to land. There was a loneliness in that that went much deeper than whether someone liked a painting or bought a piece.
I've spent my life bringing the unseen into the seen, giving form to things that might otherwise remain hidden so they can be felt, experienced, and recognized. Sometimes that opens a door into something within us. Sometimes it opens a door into a world we didn't know existed.
The invitation as always been simply to come closer and look.
Come closer and see what I see.
That way of seeing has shaped far more of my life than my work. It has changed the way I make choices, what I keep, what I let go of, and what I am willing to settle for.
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