Orbs - July 5 2025

A Vision of Orbs over the Land

Created: June/July 2025Medium:

Mixed media (Watercolour, Acrylic, Ink) on Arches cold pressed paper.

Size: 20x24”

"Creating this work was a spiritual journey for me."

I'm sure I can speak for the vast majority of the art community when I state that an artist must create in order to feel fulfilled physically, spiritually and mentally. The inability to create render itself as internal angst that begins to gnaw at the psyche and bodyand one can feel like they’re losing their skills. This can sometimes bring about more anxiety and pairs nicely with feelings of failure to perform.

Yup - that paragraph above is me. I've been struggling with a bout of psoriasis on my hands, (and now the soles of my feet). This has reminder to slow down, be mindful, and love myself better so I can lean into my craft even if my hands are not working so well. Loving ourselves is not always so easy in these days of fast assumption, judgement and conviction. So when things get rough, I smudge more deeply and with great intent whenever the challenging days invite depression to whisper in my ears. And not always, but sometimes in those moments, Creator gifts me with an art vision that I’m moved to bring to life no matter what stands in the way. Such was the case with this piece.

“Orbs” isn’t actually 'my' vision; I believe it belongs to someone else. It’s not unusual for that to happen – you see that’s the thing, most of what I paint comes from my personal experiences and interpretations of spirit. But sometimes….I get that feeling…..

I’m inspired by resilience. I’m inspired by nature’s constant, consistent, insistent struggle to be heard over the blare of apathy. I’m inspired by the power of stories and of sharing wisdom which in turn, drives the stories that I create for the artwork. So often, I feel like I’m infusing the colonial alphabet with spiritual beauty and waging a gentle war.   Some might say my work is a bit bleak. But I didn’t create the bleakness, I’m only shedding my artistic interpretive light on it using my own filter to convey the message. Your bleak is not my bleak. I'm sometimes asked if it’s hard to part with my work. I can only say that the excitement for me stems from my creative process and my need to create what I feel. I'm always excited when a profound connection is made to something I've worked on. That's always a thrill. Pieces of my life and experiences are peppered throughout my portfolio. When I sit down to paint and when I can connect to my higher self - my id - the world slowly recedes and I sit comfortably in the openness of a safe nowhere place letting the vision unfold onto the paper. Frank Howell is my muse and inspiration. He often influences my work these days. Years before learning of his work, I would sometimes imagine painting unusually large hair but could never figure out how to get it light enough, long enough, whispy enough. Then one day in the middle of a crowded public place I saw an image that stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t turn away. It was just a small poster in a window on something I can’t recall but it may well have been a ten-foot-high image in that moment. The spiritual essence of the painting spoke to me beyond the simple beauty of it. In that moment I felt like I’d just found the work of spiritual kin.

Many years ago, and unknown to me, Frank Settee, a beloved Elder who would visit Long Lake, spent some time looking at my rudimentary art portfolio online. I was stunned when someone told me this. At my Kumik meeting with him, his words about my art came to me as a surprise; he told me about myself in a spiritual conversation over print and tobacco – he shared me with myself, as seen through the eyes of my Moshom, a true Medicine Man who loved me no greater or lesser than anyone else, but only because he loved all of humanity. But he loved the Creator first and above all. He was a man who knew how to connect me to my craft using colonial words and ether in those brief moments I got to spend with him. I think of him often when I am creating works like Orbs.

I am so deeply, deeply grateful to use art to speak what’s in my heart and to translate what’s in my mind onto paper for the people who enjoy my work. I’m grateful for the love of the Creator and for the spirits I know and don’t know who help me to be an artist in this life and who help me figure out what all these images mean to me.