All of my pictures tell stories. That is their function in the world. I am not particularly interested in having a style- if anything links these works together it is my pallet or the particular colors I utilize to represent the content of my paintings. It is my voice, though I speak many languages my voice is the same in all of them.

The Aztec work utilizes a restraint of color because it is grounded in linguistic pictography and I feel little need to stray in pronunciation. I paint them because they are from books (rather codices) that survived the mass burning of our indigenous libraries and my work seeks to bring them back into this time and space, promoting their survival and celebrating their value.

Much of my Mayan work is based on books, carving and sculpture, what survives of it I promote. The cyclical nature of vase paintings describe stories that begin and end in the same place, as most Native stories do. Everything in nature is round, or curved and so our art reflects that reality, even when it appears to be flat. We all meet in the middle, the present- that is where the power is as we look backward and forward to balance ourselves.

With the destruction of many clans of the northwest coast went the representation of the animals with which those clans aligned, and both became endangered species. I represent both traditional surviving totems and those species for whom there is little to no representation of, that is my goal. To interfere with the erasure of our culture. I paint musicians and cultural figures who live in the spirit world now and whose legacies I don’t want to be forgotten.

I paint southwestern designs preserved in the pottery, so much of which has been shattered by the invading cultures who found it antithetical to their customs and beliefs. I will not forget and I work to pieces back together, to tell the stories of our people for those who can not and I do it for our descendants so they might remember their ancestors, I look forward and backward to maintain my balance, my power in the present.

Portraits