There is a space and time that exists only before the first rays of the rising sun can be felt and seen.  This is when I wake.  It is the pause before the world starts to stir.  It is the pause in which what has come in the blanket of the night begins to turn and retreat into the richness of the shadows.  It is the space  before the stillness has been broken.  This is when I most fully know myself.  This is when I am most able to hear, see and touch my soul.  This is when I consciously engage in communion with the source of my existence.

Prior to August of this year, I had experienced a period of time with a multitude of major life transitions.  Throughout this period much of who I had known myself to be was called into question.  The voice of my Mother as she prepared to leave this earthly plane formed swirling eddies out of what had  been flowing rivers in my identity and psyche.  Her words and thoughts of who I was or was not swirled with all of the other changes that had so recently occurred. I found myself struggling to hold on to who I had conceived and believed myself to be.  Time and life continued to move in an erratic and previously unknown way over the next six months.  There was no "normal".  There was no getting back to "normal".  Normal would never again be what normal once was.  

​I found myself and my identity being furthered called into question by the relationship that I had begun ten months prior to my Mother's passing.  The truth is that I was not who I had been before.  The truth is I was exhausted; physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  I needed time.  I needed space to sit with the parts of me that remained.  I needed time to grieve the loss of the parts of me that no longer knew their own name.  I needed to enter the silence and sort through the rubble.  When asked to prove that I was still who I once had proclaimed myself to be; I could not, for I was not.  The relationship ended and I began. 

In those early morning hours, before the light reveals the day, I began the long walk home.  Who was I when I was stripped bare?  Who was I when I turned off the cacophony of sound, stimulus and opinions of the world and those who believed that they knew me?  Who was I when I stood naked in the mirror and saw myself through my own eyes and the eyes of my Creator?  Could I dissolve my own entrapment?  Could I set myself free and welcome the form that I would take?  In solitude, could I reach into myself and find my truth, my beauty and my soul?  

​In the solitude I found myself to be spiritually pregnant.  Once again I began to hear that music, the hidden song  that my soul was revealing.   A deep and lavish richness is gathering within me and within my hands.  It is from this palette that I shall paint.

In Gratitude, Love & Art,
​~Heather

I am not who I once was. I am who I have always been.

Those of you who know me on a personal level have probably on occasion heard me say, "both of these things are true simultaneously".

A few days ago a strong storm came through where I live. I woke up feeling like the storm that had passed through during the night had somehow become part of my internal landscape; a disturbance of the normal condition of the atmosphere, manifesting itself by winds of unusual force or direction. Throughout my life there have been periods of time when I have been deeply aware that I am in the middle of a significant transformational shift. I believe that for the most part we are all in a constant change/state of transformation (if we so choose, welcome and allow). What feels poignant about certain periods of transformation is my level of awareness regarding the shift that is occurring.

I could feel the storm inside me. I could feel it changing, rearranging, cleansing, and breaking previously constructed parts of my identity. I cannot say it is a comfortable feeling. It can be rather unsettling, especially when the feeling is particularly strong. It feels like an electrical storm deep in my core. I have had similar experiences before but this felt different. I believe the difference lied within the sharp level of my awareness regarding the significance and impact of my choices on where this transformation would lead.

​What did I wish to leave behind? What was no longer mine to carry? What had I forgotten and sat aside that I needed to be willing to pick back up and walk with? What parts of me had formed around others beliefs about who I am or who I should be? Could the storm that I am feeling assist me in shaking loose what was not solid and core? Could it move away debris and reveal what is strong, rooted and growing inside of me? There has been one other time in my life when this feeling came on with such intensity. I started pouring through my journals to try and connect the pieces. Eureka! I found it. It was 10 years ago and it was one of the most prolific years of my life and artistic practice. It was also when I was working on a piece that I called Remembered Pieces.

​Interestingly enough, I never considered this piece completed. It had always been my intention and desire to construct a room out of the panels of canvases. A room that when constructed would create a universe and beyond.
​

A Prayer of Re-membered Pieces

Beyond the Veil of my human existence
deep in the Ancient Womb
where the creative Soil is rich with the dust of a galaxy of Stars

I Cry out to the Divine

on tears formed from the Waters that rise and fall in my body
rhythm takes form and my Soul begins to Sing

I am a song of Re-membered Pieces

my Humanity
aches
to know
to touch
to contact
to remember
my Divinity

the Call is returned, whispered on the Winds
moving the delicate strands of the Web
with the echo and reverberation of the Voices of the Holies

I Cry out to the Divine

on Winds formed from the direction and intention of my Breath
Life takes form and is carried from one Being to the next

I am a Story of Re-Membered Pieces

my Divinity
aches
to know
to touch
to contact
to Re-member
my Humanity

buried deep within this Temple of Skin, Bone and Flesh
a powerful medicine is known
cooked by the Fire that in its hunger devours all illusion

I Cry out to the Divine

Mountains and Valleys sculpted by the heat and movement of my Blood
a landscape of great Beauty and forgotten history

I am a body of Re-Membered Pieces

my Humanity
aches
 to know
to touch
to contact
 to remember
my Divinity

on the other side of the mirrored Looking glass
the Eyes of the Snake are clouded
preparations are being made to Shed its Skin and cross between the realms

I Cry out to the Divine

milk of transmutation moving, warmed by swelling breast and beating Heart
nourishment crossing the physical Boundary of skin

I am only part of the Re-membered pieces

my Divinity
aches
to know
to touch
to contact
to remember
my Humanity

Worlds touch
contact occurs
the interface is Created
the Veil shimmers and the illusion falters
Re-Membered Pieces merging in a Symphony of sound and color

I Cry out to the Divine

​All Life Answers

Change can come in an instant, forever changing the landscape that is familiar and known. Change can be subtle and unseen, moving under the surface undetected until it is ready to show its new form, its tender untouched skin.

Prior to 2012 I lived in the same location for 15 years. I had come to know this place and I had come to know my place within it. In the five years that followed, I inhabited and/or established 12 different dwellings, 12 different homes, 11 of which I personally lived in for various moments or lengths of time.

The cycle of the last 18 months, a year and a half as we currently mark the passage of time has been one in which unforeseeable changes, transitions, beginnings and endings have continually rolled over my internal and external landscapes with the unpredictable movement of a great and massive body of water, like the coming of a storm that lingers, shapeshifts and takes new and uncertain forms.  I said goodbye to my father as I knew him in this world to be. Five months following his passing I would care for my mother as she too took her leave of this earthly plane. I have walked and lived on the desert sands of the southwest and I have stood at the shores of the Mother Ocean and tasted her salted memory. I have returned to the land that birthed and raised me: revisiting what had formed and began my construction as the being that I had come to know myself to be. I lived through the season which I have come to call My Winter in the House of Ashes; four containers of those who had passed grouped in passage in their respective urns. I welcomed a new love into my arms and I opened my arms to release a love that I no longer knew how to hold. I have watched as one of my four legged companions, a teacher and a friend diminished quickly from this world, leaving another void and space that echoed with what once was. I lost and found myself, unsure of what remained, forever changed by the movements of lives and the marching of time.

I am inhabiting a new place, a new home once more. One previously unknown to me. I am in many ways unknown to myself. I am a creature who deeply inhabits, one whose foundation reaches out like the roots of a tree, connecting to the soil in which it has grown, from which it has come. What happens when the soil is scorched by the cleansing of a great fire? What happens when the forest burns and your roots, your foundation no longer stands as it once did? What happens during the period of time when the landscape lies dormant in appearance, cleared of what had once grown? Is it possible to become quiet and still while the life underneath connects to the nutrient rich ashes in order to begin to push up and live again? I have asked myself if I can be comfortable not knowing what that new form, that new life will take.  

Under the Sheets of Rain was the first painting that I completed after my Mother's Death.  The paintings always come first.  Until a feeling or experience has been moved through me by means of image, color, paint, I often struggle with "words" for they are not my first, best or preferred language.  Under the Sheets of Rain was painted while I lived in the home my parents' had built a life in.  A period of time which is included in a chapter of my life that I think of as the Interstice - an intervening space, or an interval between spaces and times.

As always, I thank you for the moments you choose to enter my world.   My Hands, Your Hands,

In beauty, love and art,
​~Heather