Letter to Collectors

At the entrance to my studio, taped above the glass of an old wooden door that opens into a building more than 100 years old, I wrote this covenant.

Before I enter, I stop. I read it:

My body knows.
I know the difference.
I will not settle for less
than love that is fully here.
Take me.

Every line has deep meaning and significance to me. But the last one is the one I give my life and my art to.

Take me.

I surrender. I am willing to trust... even when I am afraid... even when I am terrified. It is my way of saying to The Power That Knows The Way: I am available. I am open. I am willing to be taken by Love, by Grace, by Art, by Presence, by the fullness of life that wants to take me all the way in.

Every time I read this covenant and allow myself to be saturated with the palpable substance of it, I become more present, more in my own body, more in the heart of my own life.

I come back to the place inside me that is grounded, centered, and tuned to the octave that reverberates as truth. I come back to the part of me that refuses to abandon what my body knows. And I come back to the part of me that is willing to be vulnerable and exposed enough to surrender to something bigger than the life I already know.

The part that refuses to stay defended, even when I’m afraid, against the love, beauty, fire, Grace, and... sometimes... terrifying change that want to take me.

Every day, this is where my work begins.

Before the first brushstroke. Before the first form. Before I show up to make anything.

I breathe. I extend my awareness into the field. I listen.

I listen for what my body knows is true.

My work begins with the vulnerability of being guided and the humility and congruence of obeying what my body knows truth feels like.

My body knows the difference between something alive and something pretending. It knows the difference between beauty that was contrived and beauty that came through... beauty that arrived.

I know the difference between art that decorates a wall and art that reaches all the way in. I know the difference between something made to be looked at and something that becomes a portal into a richer, truer, more fulfilling way of living.

My work is for people who are not casually interested in that feeling.

It is for people like me who have been haunted again and again by the yearning to be fully alive... to feel deeply, thoroughly and truly... to know the unconstrained deliciousness of freedom... to be fully claimed by the love, beauty, and truth their bodies have never stopped longing for.

The ones who feel something visceral and meaningful in their chest and cannot override it anymore.

The ones who know how much it hurts to live separate from what their body knows is possible.

The ones willing to let that ache come close enough to become a doorway.

The ones willing to be touched.

Opened.

Changed.

The ones who know that what they live close to matters. How they live matters. What they surround themselves with matters.

They feel how the things they place around them shape their days. It shapes their nervous system. It shapes their relationships. It shapes what they remember. It shapes their focus. It shapes the momentum carrying them toward what they truly want. It shapes what they allow themselves to become.

I don’t know what drew you to reading this letter, but I want you to know that it matters to me.

I imagine if we met in person, we would both recognize something simple and important: we have each other’s best interest at heart.

I don’t know what lights you up. I do know the exquisite pleasure and sublime joy my body feels when something is true, when something feels right, when something in me recognizes life and cannot turn away.

I want that for you.

I want you to have whatever genuinely lights you up. Whatever brings you closer to great love because, in my experience, that is what makes life worth living. Not the polite pretense of love, not the careful, well-mannered imitation of love, not the kind of love that says the right things while the depth of heart remains starved... but real love that actually enters your body, stays even when life is hard, and changes your life!

I want that for you because I know how rich and life-giving that feels in my own body.

I know it because I feel it.

My art comes from that place.

It comes from love with substance. Love that breathes. Love with both magic and fire. Love that is rich, meaningful, wholehearted, brave, generous, devoted, and alive.

Unbridled, passionate love that holds nothing back. Love that moves through the body like lightning through the heart. Love that awakens what is true and gives you the unyielding courage to live from inside of that.

That is the feeling I am listening for and surrendering to when art is coming through me.

That is the feeling I want to reverberate through your heart and home.

And if living with my work brings you closer to that kind of love, that kind of connection with the people you love, that kind of aliveness, that kind of truth in your own life...

wonderful.

I want you to have that.

I want you to have stunning beauty in and all around you, and the integrity of knowing and living the deeper truth of who you are.

If surrounding yourself with the energy of my work gives you that feeling, that’s wonderful. If you find that feeling somewhere else, that’s wonderful too. If those feelings are not being ignited in your body by my work, listen to that too.

Find what does.

My work is not the only work created for people who refuse to live surrounded by objects that leave their deeper life untouched. And I wake up excited because I know there are people in this world my work is being made for.

Making art is central to my daily life because when I was 18, I stood in front of a huge Monet painting for more than three hours and could not move.

Something beneath the paint, and more than paint, reached into me. It wasn’t intellectual. It wasn’t something someone explained. It wasn’t something that touched me because anyone told me it mattered.

That painting fully met me in my body. In my heart. In my soul.

My breath changed. Tears welled up in my eyes... tears that wouldn’t stop. Something real and meaningful and significant in me opened.

That moment taught me that art can be more than beautiful.

When it comes from the right place, it is a portal.

A way of touching and being intimate with what is most real. A way of remembering what the world teaches us to forget.

That is why I make art.

Everything you’ve seen on this website was born out of that moment. Every painting and sculpture began with my whole body deeply listening for that feeling.

I stay with that feeling as I work. I stay with it because my body knows. I stay with it because it feels true, and everything else doesn’t.

And somehow, something true always comes through.

And when it is done, I feel a new heart beating inside the piece.

Something alive has arrived.

I’m sure there are times you have felt this too.

The pieces you choose to live with are not neutral. They shape what comes alive in you. They shape the life you are living. They shape the love you are living. They shape the quality of your relationships. They shape what is allowed to thrive and grow in your heart.

Anyone reveling in a life truly worth living knows there is a fine art to keeping close, every day, to what matters most.

That is the fine art I care about.

The fine art of using fine art to move through daily life profoundly connected to what matters most.

So if you feel something real with a piece of art, mine or someone else’s... a shimmer, a pull, a palpable yes your body knows before your mind can explain it, a deeper current daring you toward greater aliveness... listen.

Stay with your body.

It tells the truth.

Let it show you where the walls have become too small. Let it show you where life is asking you to open and breathe. Let it show you what is yearning to come alive in you.

Because in every moment, your body knows.

And that is not a small thing.

It may be the whole thing.