The Darkness Around Us is Deep II Pastel, graphite, with Irish linen thread on paper 25.5 x 15 framed | $425

Symbolically, the book-like structure represents us as both, a collective and individual. It was created from one sheet of paper, torn, soaked and peeled apart. The paper curls and folds naturally in reaction, much like how our own lives are shaped by events. It is purposely left blank, leaving the fibrous scars formed from the pulling apart. Beautiful. Rough. Scarred. Every WoMan. The threads are unraveling as though yielding to the force of the paper as it curls into its self. So often we are bound by unseen forces– limiting beliefs formed from stories of the past and heartache.and the underscoring emotions surrounding these events.

Inspired by the poem, A Ritual to Read to Each Other by William Stafford. His words are inscribed into each panel.
If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail, but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider— lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.