And after the Doll series...

I felt a bit defeated by oils. So, I took a break from them and took up a new medium: acryla gouache, which is basically an acrylic polymer paint with added chalk-type agents that make the paint super-matte when dry. They also dry quickly as you are using them. The bold,bright color palette is what first attracted me to them. As I began to paint with them, since they dry quickly, they forced me to paint more primitively, and I found this a relief after working hard on oil techniques. So I abandoned photo and lighting references, and just painted from my mind. I attempted to capture they things I'd "see" when I'd use Reiki energy, or how I see angels, or what I'd see on shaman journeys,etc. I painted on printmaking paper, made a few hand sculptures from volcanic ash clay, and made several masks. I also aged some cotton rag paper and began some graphite drawings. I became obsessed with this body of work, which culminated in an open-studio.Most people were scared of the work, but some got it's similarities to tantric art; where one must accept the demon within as half of a whole. The point of the work was to attempt to capture what I see energetically when working with healing energy. People tend to think of "healing" as all white robes and peace and banality. While those things exists, and are a by-product of, the healing process involves facing onesself for all that is there, facing imbalances and hidden memories and possible spirit attachments and all sorts of clumsy, ugly parts of ourself in order to accept them as part of ourselves, thereby forgiving onesself and opening the doors or higher knowledge. To pass through those doors requires one to accept responsibility for the state of one's life...I also wanted to portray angels in their more controversial, but true light: as beings of immense power and terrifying light. They present themselves to us more often than not in visual terms that are not threatening to us, but they are immense warriors in truth.