My opening page hosts the quick, concise, and polite version of the story of
my life...... Only the barest essence of what made me who I am as an artist,
and yet there is so much more that lies beneath, the story that those who
know me well are aware of. It is not all of who I am, but it has been a
formative part of the person that I have become, and in speaking about it I
break the chains of silence that were firmly fixed all around me as a child.
I grew up in a religious household, born to a mother who was abused
herself, by a grandmother who was also abused. Who knows how far back
that abuse traveled. My parents worked hard to build a storybook sort of
life, that looked good from the outside; to achieve and strive to get and have
the life that they wanted, making things seem perfect to outsiders, and yet
that is not the life I experienced. I experienced rages and anger and
beatings with a ping pong paddle with holes drilled in it to make the air
whistle through it faster, while my father was always somewhere else
working as a teacher - principal - and then superintendent of schools, and
my world was not safe.
By the age of seven or eight my next older brother began to molest me, and
his furtive and manipulative ways earned him favor with my mother. She
has since said he was the weakest child and therefore needed her additional
protection. Whatever the reasoning he got away with the abuse, and I later
found out that my parents discovered that it was going on and covered it
up. The ultimate betrayal of a young soul.
After the sexual abuse ended my brother continued to be verbally and
physically abusive toward me... a weakling who took his rage at the world
out on me. My mother, in all her anger and inadequacy, tried to quench the
little flame that burned brightly inside me. She called me horrible names
and belittled me, and punished me all the time for imagined transgressions,
and it only grew worse as I got older.
As soon as I was able I spent all my time outside, in the woods and along
the creek beds, away from my home... in the natural world that felt safer to
me than the one place that should have been my safe haven. I learned
about the birds and the rocks and the water, spent time with the childhood
friends that I made... usually gentle souls who also did not quite "fit" in
their own worlds... and I spent time in their gentle homes and waited until I
could leave this place of childhood behind. Since childhood my art was
everything to me and I drew and painted and absorbed every skill that I
could.
After high school I moved away from Pennsylvania all the way to Florida,
where my oldest brother lived. I took a restaurant job and soon met the
man I would marry, an Iranian man nine years my senior, never having
gotten any sort of help or counseling after the childhood abuse.
Straightaway the relationship was off to a bad start, and if I had any
self-esteem I would have fled... instead I spent the next twenty years raising
two children and trying to do everything right to avoid the anger and rages.
I became an outspoken advocate for survivors of child sexual abuse, and
painted while my children slept and went to school. Eventually the plants
and flowers and animals that I had painted since childhood were replaced
by female figures... at first dark and frightening paintings, but over time
they lightened and evolved and became a series of Goddesses that I have
painted off and on ever since, called the LIGHT Series. They were collected
and articles were written, interviews were granted, and little by little
people came to know me in my community.
A friend and mentor hand-delivered one of my framed paintings to Hillary
Clinton at Mr. Clinton's first inauguration and my first licensing deal with
The Company of Women came to pass. A series of collectors plates were
issued before the company went bankrupt, taking my original art and
drawings with them. I spent a year as an artist in residence at an
elementary school where I painted murals with more than 150 pre-k
through fifth grade children, including some very wonderful special needs
kids.
All the while my husband was emotionally and verbally abusive to me in
front of my children and my family, and they all said I needed to leave
him.... until one day I did... and then they all wanted me to go back. It was
an impossible situation, a catch-22. I flew North to Maryland the next day
with only a suitcase, while he looked everywhere for me in Central Florida
thinking I could not get away because he had ripped my bankcard, my
checkbook, and my car keys out of my hands before fleeing as the police
arrived. I got away but I lost everything. Everything.
For a time it was not clear whether I would stay in this life or not, but
somehow, slowly, I began to heal. I was offered the opportunity to paint a
large mural at the National Zoo in 2003, and although they could not pay
me for my time, they purchased all the supplies that I would need - paint
brushes, paint, buckets, tarps - everything that I had once owned as a
professional artist and mural painter. It opened a door and once again I
stepped through.
I got back to my art once again and I volunteered and then worked at an
art center for a time, eventually going to work for a corporate art
consulting firm that was based in the art center. I learned a new side of the
business and worked with artists to earn my living. Eventually taking
studio space in the art center I continued to work on licensing deals for my
art... most recently a suite of four of my images is offered for sale on the
ships of Princess Cruise Line and the Cunard Line Queen Mary 2. My
original painting Peacock Crimson has been licensed by the company
Transformational Threads for a series of limited edition thread paintings
hand-embroidered in Vietnam, and recently featured at a Trunk Show at
the Smithsonian's Freer-Sackler Galleries.
As of February, 2011 I moved my studio and growing business out of the art
center and into glorious new studio and gallery space located in Glen Echo,
Maryland. From this new venue I host workshops, classes, discussions,
poetry readings and more.... with so much more to come. I host a monthly
salon for metro DC artists, photographers, and arts professionals that is
becoming increasingly popular. Every day I work on new paintings and
mixed media work in the studio and I keep moving forward one step at a
time.
Is my world perfect? No... but I am alive and engaged and fortunate to have
this opportunity to go on, when so many others do not. As always, my glass
is full to overflowing.....
.....And 2012 marks my 31st year as a professional artist.
Welcome to my world.