Glimpses Of An Immanent Sanctuary

The motives underlying all my paintings are both current and timeless: our need for sustenance, beauty, and grace. Humans have not changed dramatically since we first appeared and I look for threads of continuity, aiming to make imagery that’s rooted in the mythic, the mystic, and the cycles of Nature.

For thirty years, concurrent with my professional art practice and soon after completing a dual major in fine art and philosophy, I was an organic farmer, largely occupied with goats and with effecting alchemical transformations of milk and plants. Those decades of raw, ever-precarious, hyper-aware farm experience resonate throughout the artwork, testifying to the cycles and perils of life for all sentient beings, humans included.

These various experiences and interests are folded into imagery of vessels, birds, plant life, human figures, hands in motion, and remnants of classical architecture. The work encompasses both nuanced and bold color play, flat space and "faux bas-relief", and always a preoccupation with graceful form. I think of the entire body of work as, Glimpses of an Immanent Sanctuary.




"Without remembering, how will our past speak to our future? How will we even remember if we have left something important behind, and if so, where to go to find it?" - Julia Alvarez


Some historical context for these fresh echoes of perennial motifs: In the ancient Mediterranean world, a full sanctuary dedicated to a deity included the architectural elements and lush, lively groves surrounding a temple; an outdoor altar for offerings of valuables and edibles; the temple itself, where a representation of the deity resided; a “backstage” room for practical tasks; and a treasury room where the most precious offerings were kept safe. The portfolio of paintings here is organized with this in mind.


"All of us, women and men, are just beginning to grasp the significance of both iconography and myth, beginning to understand that they represent a history of a large part of the life force of this planet."
- Winifred Milius Lubell 1914-2012