As many of you know most of my art pieces have poems or stories that go with them.
I can’t help it. The writing is part of THE process of making art for me. The
art work comes before the writing 99% of the time. The stories started way
back in my career. I believe it began with dream journaling which is a way
of dialoguing with the dream characters. I have been doing dream work since
I was a child. The writing or dialoguing has always helped me to understand
my feelings in my dreams. I would also draw dream characters and figures to
help me understand my dreams on a deeper level. This is where my business
name comes from- Drawing On The Dream. Some times while I am working on a piece of art the image will begin to
speak to me. As I work I am starting to get an idea of what this piece is
about. You see, I do believe that the art is its own self. It does not
belong to me. It has a life of its own. It has its own destiny. I am in
partnership with the art. I depend on the art to tell me what it is about.
When I am pretty sure the art work is finished I hang it up on my studio
work wall and begin to write while gazing at the art. I am the scribe
writing down what I hear. Sometimes the titles are enough. The art says what
it wants to say in the title. The rest of the time the art has a lot to say.
This can take days and even weeks to fine tune the art dialog into the
finished stories. This is not the art’s fault that it sometimes takes so
long. It is my own lack of language and writing skill. My goal is to
translate into English the depth of art language including metaphor,
symbology, sadness, and humor. I hone the stories until it feels right and
resonates in my heart and feels true.Even though I sometimes struggle with the writing to get to the finished
product is an integral part of my work in the world. These stories want
to be told.