Madame Grand in Skin-Sucker Reverie with Bag Pipe Third Eye Octopus
oil on linen
23 x 27 inches
2023
This is my home, green and crystal blue, deep shimmering and cold. My waters are off the Argyll coast of Scotland. I’ve got the best eyes. From here I often see Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun in a tide pool on this rocky coast, marveling at sea stars and glistening dark blue mussels. Le Brun is the most celebrated woman painter of her day, and she pokes at coastal stones together with Catherine Noël Grand, aka Madame Grand, wife of Monsieur Talleyrand. It is Catherine, who she paints; it is Catherine who interests me. I watch her from my body; I am one with her. Being her, my tentacles slide toward turquoise; being with her my body strays not from mostly grey, where dark, my shadows retain the deepest darkest purple. My right eye bobs in and out the water, perhaps they’ll mistake me for a seal until I slink out to touch their ankles. Doubled, I see through Catherine’s eyes and also my own; I am also watching her even as she sees me. When she spots me I put on a brief show of color, rippling chromatic. I am change. They gasp and follow me into the water, and we speed through underwater tunnels.
Simultaneously, Elizabeth is painting Catherine in Salzburg. This magical realm holds more than singular worlds. So we three come up through the tunnels in Sicily and then make our way further through tunnels to Salzburg where they also already are. I slink into Catherine’s skin as she sits for the painting. She’s written a short song that she has shared with Elizabeth and now she holds the sheet music in her hand. This prop from the heart is fitting to this portrait as Catherine is known for her love of music, and her wit in general. This portrait, painted with her lips slightly parted in song, holding the song she wrote, will help her to be presented to society. It is a notch in her belt. She is in a reverie, high and singing. She feels my presence; on our way here we have connected. Skin-to-skin, we communicate telepathically, each feels the other’s senses.
I want to make it absolutely clear to Elizabeth that I’m here, she needs to see me and so I appear as I am, as I commune with Catherine as she sits for her portrait. Together we arrange ourselves in an attractive and clever pose for the painting—clever because it belies our skin connection – and yet… one of my suckers stands in for Catherine’s third eye; truly it melds with her inner sight. I settle into the pose; my tentacles turn brighter blue and my whole body reflects and magnifies the colors in the portrait – the blue of Catherine’s eyes and blue bows on her white dress, and the green, green velvet of the couch. Together we create an image for the reverie of life. Elizabeth layers on cobalt and Prussian blues until they coalesce into a deep dark background. Elizabeth in another time – call her by her name, Andrea -- conveys a metaphor as she layers rich colors that together conjoin to black, and the colors show her that out of this intricate void comes…the possibility of manifesting desires.
Stag Backs Cecilia Gallerani with Duke’s Ermine and Nascent Child
oil on panel
15 x 21 inches
2020
I stand at the edge of the woods, there where the cork trees meet the castle garden. Light green moss offers a delicious distraction, I munch while I wonder what Cecilia will look like, here in this waking reality. Rustling leaves interrupt. I look up to see her; I stop still, though my nose stays busy - onion, sweat, jasmine, olive. She stops still, breathless, but a few feet in front of me.
Our eyes lock. She is graceful, normally, but in this terrain she’s terribly clumsy, encumbered by silk and taffeta: she is draped in layers and puffs of lapis-blue and vermillion-red. Her eyes have glints of the same blue sparked with fire. Distressed, she carries the burden of being a kept mistress. Even as her portrait is being painted by the Maestro, Sig. Da Vinci, the Duke who’s commissioned it is engaged to another woman. Soon, she will be pregnant with his child.
I adore that Cecilia. She is here. Her long fingers run along the cork bark, she does not reach out to touch me, yet. Instead, she fits her palm in the crevices between branches. She stops. I freeze. The breeze continues steady. Steady, patient, even so I suppress twitches in my knees, the forever impulse to run, but I am held by the familiarity of her form. We’ve been guided to this meeting by timeless dreams; we’ve traveled together beat-for-beat for the long of her life.
I bow my head and invite Cecilia onto my back. Awkwardly, she is faced with my antler, intimidating usually, she marvels instead at their velvet coating, yearly renewed. Through her, I am made aware of the outer softness of these, my weapons, and of their ability, as antennae, to sense messages from this world and from others. She notices that they are the same red-brown Da Vinci’s been mixing to render her own hair in its tidy net. An unexpected chromatic alliance of deep-red-purple and dark green. Seems right.
She slides, side saddle onto my bare back, her be-silked frame barely weighs against the sturdy of my musculature. Paired, our contrasting frames color my strength with her vulnerability and we merge. As we run our paired power amplifies. She feels this inhuman pace. For my part, her thoughts and emotions seem to come to my fore: My home, these woods, are stunning through her eyes. As we run, her heady experience permeates my entire being.
Braided Snake and Pearls Betray Simonetta’s Headache
oil on panel
17 x 26 inches
2023
Hortensia del Prado Lifted out of Lightning Garden in Speeding Possi of Fireflies
oil on panel
26.7 x 20.4
2021
“Hortensia” is hydrangea, a bush of abundant blooms, each small flower a varied shade of purple. She is Hortencia Hortensia and we are a posse. We, sighting hydrangeas outside this slate-blue farmhouse, it against a grey sky cracked - open - with yellow light, confirms that we will encounter Hortensia here. Gathered tightly, our bioluminescence announces us; we thin our orb into individual stars of lights; we blend to dusk. There are no neighbors, no human neighbors for miles.
Hortensia cracks open the door and adds a blanket to the baby’s swaddle. She is wearing the black wool and silk dress we’d pictured. The tent of her skirt reaches the ground, so hard a structure that she appears to glide out on invisible feet.
Lightning in the sky mirrors us, approving our next actions. Spectacular cracks frighten the baby into a full cry. Her mother lays a hand on her back. The child is tightly wrapped against her mother’s torso, her swaddle the same black fabric as her mother’s bodice.
We, posse, approach as one; our constellation congeals into a light-cocoon that fits the woman, dress, and baby. We hope our phosphorescence feels protective, not unnerving, as we envelop Hortensia mother and Catharina child. Their bodies tighten even as their faces are mesmerized. They don’t discern motion as our cocoon floats, as we then then accelerate. Those of us in the middle merge, forming a creamy yellow glow. Mother and child close and open their eyes to authenticate their vision. Those of us on the outside navigate, our foreseen path syncs with the fields and forest. Our movement, on the inside, feels still.
Wild Mare’s Comet Eye Spirals into Lucrezia Crivelli’s Dream to Absolve her of Mistress Guilt in the Face of Courtly Politics
oil on panel
17 x 24 inches
2022
On the first night, comets streak in the blue-black sky. I gallop upon them. To stay on course, I jump from celestial tail to tail. Lucrezia sees their reflections in my eyes as she looks up from her bed, from its Castle, wrapped in junipered grove. She sees me as if a dream, at first miniscule. I zig (growing closer) zag (growing larger) down to land in her mind’s eye. She is sparked awake.
When Lucrezia sits up, dawn is waiting. She reaches for that quill by her bed the one she used to write Ludovico about her pregnancy; a letter of good news from his kept mistress. Now, she writes of our meeting as a dream. Her nausea turns into a twinge of butterflies. She feels she’s grown an arm’s length in each direction. Less preoccupied with the duke and his fickle attentions, she’s energized: could we, she and I, meet in waking life?
The following night, standing atop a precipice between the garden and forest ravine, she’s scouring the sky. Her dark mane of hair caught up in a net is the same iron-black as mine. Both are obscured by night. Mine is blown in gusts so wildly that it frames both our faces. She catches the reflection of yesterday’s comets in my eyes. She more than I, is the one chomping at the bit to jump realities. In an answer to her desire, I reiterate this meeting in her dream. She lives and dreams the same story. One night’s touch expands her in all directions.
The next evening, she holds out a strong, manicured hand. I snort upon it inhaling the scent of pine. She’d been holding some needles she’d chosen from the forest floor as she looked for me. I breathe in all of her - nervous, excited, and astronomical. The size of her spirit is also a smell, the same size as mine. I lean down and she mounts my back, she swings her legs over and grips my sides tight; this lady this night is not for sidesaddle. We are one and running.
Cleopatra’s Symbol Entwined by its Signifier Protecting her Ability to Receive Herself
oil on panel
17 x 22 inches
2023
Red Fox Shields and Warms Margarita Theresa Where her Dress is Off Duty
oil on linen
22 x 31.5 inches
2021
Winter is almost over in Vienna. The growing warmth draws Margarita Theresa outside just as I am drawing her out of her shell, teasing her. Her walks last longer and she wanders alone, still acclimating to the vast castle grounds. In our encounters, I appear for long enough that she doesn’t doubt she’s seen me. In the hedge maze, I dissolve; she sometimes tries to follow though more often now she just laughs out loud. She understands it’s a game.
We play through the summer. One early fall day, I appear at the edge of the garden, where leaves have started to turn and glint orange in the sun. So too do these burnt orange reds flow through folds and ribbons of her favorite dress. This is the season for this dress. They are my colors too. We blend in color to enter a deeper rung of understanding.
A few months later, on a true autumn day after tea it grows cloudy and the crackling fire beckons me in. On this rare occasion, I curl up in the corner of the velvet couch in her favorite cozy parlor. It is the same earth red of her dress, of my fur. This is the game where I pretend to be comforted by domesticity, though the indoor smells are discomfiting. Leopold is arranging a hunt and I am right under his nose, in cahoots with his young wife. I remain unseen to the house staff, the two Hapsburg toddlers, her confidants, and ladies in waiting. Margarita usually finds me during her solitary afternoons. I play with her so that she may feel more herself, far from Spain.
Bows tied, on her way outside, presumably to look for me, she can’t resist the fire. That dress houses her child-bearing body, the reason she is here. Her and the room’s reds suggest fecundity, though she is a teenager with no desire for her older cousin. I will impart some understanding, to help her withstand the sex, pregnancies, and childbirth. Though, in two children from now, her body will have been done with this world.
Upon seeing me for the first time beyond a fleeting moment, and inside, she starts, blue eyes wide. Her skin cannot go whiter; she nibbles on red Mexican vases made from lead containing clay to achieve her extremely fair pallor. The lead has also made tenuous her tether to the human’s perceived world of separations between the mundane and spirit realms. The clay is leeching her nutrients while producing its desired effect upon her skin color, announcing beyond doubt: she, as the face of her family, is a part of the colonizing class, not one of the colonized.
I curl up tighter, inviting her closer with a tilt of my head. She tentatively sits next to me. We lock eyes. She slowly outstretches her fingers to caress my fur which matches colors of the crackling flames and of her dress. I am real and she is relaxing. I wag my tail and she’s enticed to play. I run quickly, hide, return jump to her side. My quiet barks are insisting, “your turn!” She easily finds coy, quick looks and moves. I jump onto her shoulders and snuggle. She relaxes more though the dress’s scaffold keeps her spine straight. When the prince finds us, my tail is covering the translucent skin of her neck and upper chest (the only skin not covered by her dress) warming and protecting her. Her eyes are softer, more playful. Mine are a piercing light green, cunning, and ready to pounce.
Short Nosed Fruit Bat Hangs with Genevra de Benci on Spike-Protein-Like Juniper Tree Screaming Don’t Shoot the Messenger
oil on panel
14.5 x 15 inches
2022
Upside down, I yawn myself awake and click my tongue, echolocating for strawberries below, but I find only mosquitos humming, whizzing high pitched around my favorite Juniper tree. Even as Genevra finds me, unwittingly. She is standing inside the tree; she has backed so far away from her fiancé that she’s embedded herself there. Perhaps she is at home in it, having always known it as her namesake; “Juniper” interchanges with “Genevra.” Her refined curls blend with the leaves, similar in size, they quiver to me like iron-plum, like reddish-brown, like olive-green. I cannot know color except by how it moves. She is brooding, and only sixteen, it’s understandable that she doesn’t want to marry that merchant, that Luigi Niccolini. I’m hanging on a delicate branch and maneuver to hover as close as possible without touching her forehead. I merge with her third eye; I hope I’ve managed it without invading her space.
Shout as I may Genevra can’t hear my sonar screams. I send thoughts to her, as I yell (reverberate) the two points I know she must hear through her adolescent third eye.
One: she must use her voice within this coming marriage, the one she cannot fathom. The fact that she can hear me, through her third eye, means that she can communicate this way with other beings. Her voice will give her agency and her intuition will guide her to use it.
Two: 650 years in her future, a plague will come. This I can foresee. From a bat it will spread to the humans; its cause -- the bat’s displacement from its habitat by the humans. Her present, Genevra’s Renaissance times, is where it begins. The ‘enlightenment’ they’ve begun to celebrate engenders an illusion that human control over the environment will seed abundance. They cannot see that their narcissism will cause a profound disconnection from, even violence toward, the elements that are our means for existence. Our batty means, but their means too, yes. They’ve put their blinders up; they see nothing of this despite the brilliance of their eyes. The darkness of their enlightenment rises.
I scream volumes. The first point first, to give her the self-assuredness to listen to the second. I ask her to use her voice and attitude to dilute and divert Renaissance aggrandizement of linear order. I am the blind one though it is I who sees that the Renaissance, which humans see as the return to light, has already started to degrade humans’ respect for all beings around them. It is a deeper step into the nullification of non-linear, intuitive power. Perhaps my foretelling will prevent my descendant bat in the future from conveying that century’s pandemic, the outcome of human solipsism.
The thumb she is under can be her own power to wield. Pubescent navel-gazing can help her locate ingenuity. However insensitive, hers is a powerful family; her voice will be heard. Her family’s arranged marriage for her, then life with Luigi, and even having to lay with him and bear his children, will be the smallest of obstacles she will have to endure, compared to the positive affects she will set in motion for her descendants.
Aurora Imbued Mother Bear Shepherds Maria de Medici’s Young Transition
oil on panel
15 x 20.5 inches
2021
I, polar bear, am laying on a white snowy plain. If you look closely in the clear night you’ll see a semi-circle line-up of us. I offer cuddles for Maria who died young, to her spirit self. She is straddling three places at once which is why she needs our assistance, to complete three overlapping transitions. Maria still needs some guidance in her transition from life to death and then perhaps back into life again. For this last step, she will need the most guidance. There, in the last transitional realm, there is a relative soon-ness within the experience of time. It will be maybe 60 – 100 years in human-measured time.
I stand on hind legs. I can see in Maria’s spellbound eyes, that my enormity is breathtaking and my power which mirrors her own, is shocking to her. Yet, she trusts me because she perceives gentleness in my face and gestures. I show her that I will mother her through this dark, and there is light within it.
This night is a full, deep, icy cold which contrasts to the colors of the aurora lights which start to appear behind us. The colors feel warm (comfortable, vibrant, clear, full of motion) and are enormous in the volume of their hues, enormous like us. In their warmth they are also crisp; intense and wispy at their edges which are made visible by their proximity to some sharply shimmering stars, loitering in the black night.
When each bear steps forward, one vibrant color in the sky – magenta, green, and blue pastels – move their shadows through a band of their light, like quickly moving keys on piano keyboard in the sky. Then, the color shimmies through the bear’s back and materializes into a cone of soft-serve ice cream in its paw. Surrounding Maria on three sides, each bear offers her a different colored flavor. The ice cream is for her to enjoy, to savor the multitudinous experiences – even from a short life - before she fully transitions. In sampling the flavors, she has a condensed burst of the feeling of her life, in her heart, to help leave behind sorrow and regret.
The bears in the line-up are offering protection, courage, fluff and cuddles. Maria’s dress changes color like the aurora does; she is reflecting back to the bears that she is receiving their gifts through the light and ice cream. She has transitioned into death at least enough so that she communicates intuitively, through color and images. Verbal language is not readily available to her. In life, she was quick-witted, articulate in Italian and Greek. Though now, she is eager to release that aspect of her identity and navigate this transition, to not be in limbo anymore. Maria only lived for 17 years, and after being in limbo since 1557, risking the unknown is worth it to move through to the next phase of her existence.
Hawk Perched on Double Strand Eyeballs Your Intentions
oil on panel
24 x 28 inches
2019
Spider Man Agama Lizard Uncoils from Depths of Elizabeth Van Der Weyden’s Belly, Serving as Ally in Reconnection with Husband and Portraitist, Rogier, and Reminder of Magic in Mundane
oil on panel
13 x 19.5 inches
2020
Spiny Orb Weaving Spider Be-Hatted Bichon Fries Guards Dutchess of Alba as she Relaxes in Porcupine's Embrace,
oil on linen
17 x 27 inches
2019
Madame Bonier de la Moson Luxuriates in the Protective Embodiment of Sun Bear; his Hibernation-Harnessed Fortitude Lends Her a Lack of Poise Needed to Play Diana the Huntress.
Oil on Linen
17 x 20 inches
2015
Rotational Axes and Bear as Girl's Best Tools When Coming of Age in an Increasingly Scientific Though Still Natural World
oil on panel
11 x 14.5 inches
2009
Anna French Reade Gains Perspective and Displays her Warmth in a Reassuring Cuddle with a Rothschild Giraffe
oil on Linen
16.5 x 20 inches
2014
Bound and Protected by Blessbuck Couple Who Allow Her to be in Two Places at Once, Betty de Rothschild Serves as Shamanic Procurer of Power Animals and Hostess, on Safari
oil on Linen
15 x 20 inches
2014
Mrs. Israel Mintz and Shark Protectors who Guard her Jewels and Remind her to Celebrate her Meanness, Wealth, and the Opportunities that it Affords her; Rows of Teeth Mimic Rows of Pearls and Fend off Guilt and Greedy Predators
oil on Linen
18 x 20 inches
2014
Sea Otter Shepherds Antea out of Heartbreak into Forward Motion; Ripples Carry Audacity of Choosing Lovers Out through the Ages; Her Courage Expanded by that of Foremothers’ Elemental Challenges
oil on linen
15 x 20 inches
2015
Lady Receives Guidance while Riding Liberation Generated Emotional Waves; Walrus’ Hug Ensures Endless Flow of Divine Love as Evidenced by Red Carnation; she Calculates her Stores of Affection
oil on Linen
18 x 20 inches
2015
Woman and Fish in Cahoots
oil on panel
10.5 x 14.4
2009
Woman Who Wears the Face of Her Clothes’ Worst Enemy and Whose Reflection Betrays Her Beauty Ideal
oil on canvas
14 x 18 inches
2009
Grasshopper and Woman Caught in the Act of Sewing a Bonnet to Hide his Antennae
oil on canvas
11 x 14.5
2009
Spotted Hyena Brings Lightness, which Yields Resilience and Understanding, to Rachel Levy Seixas by Mimicking her Laughs and Cries
oil on Linen
16.5 x 20 inches
2014
Self-Portrait as Illuminated Woman With Pacing Donkeys: Allegory for Cycles of Life and Death
oil on canvas
7 x 12 inches
2009
Woman Growing More Graceful With Each Stretch of Her Spine as She Practices Good Posture and Attentive Listening
oil on canvas
10.7 x 16 inches
2009
Stroll in Garden with Small Dog and Large Ear Muffs That Double as an Estate Melodizer
oil on canvas
11 x 18
2009
Seal Flirts with Innocent Apple while Lady Mourns her Rigidity; Seal and Lady Are Bound Having Saved One Another in the North Sea
oil on Linen
19 x 20 inches
2014
Woodpeckers and Woman’s Lovely Head as Metaphor for Mind Expansion Through Listening to Nourishing Sounds of Nature
oil on canvas
12 x 18.5
2009
Queen Isabella and Baby Elephant Listen Expansively in Quest for Wisdon on Self-Pampering in the Midst of Cultivating an Awereness of Portuguese Basic Needs
oil on Linen
18 x 20 inches
2014
Fashionable Goose Accompanies Flighty Mistress For Late Afternoon Stroll
oil on panel
11 x 14.6 inches
2009
Pirate-Eyed, Horned-Owled Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun, Portaitist for Marie Antionette, Portraying Herself, Inspired by Rubens, as Racily Open-Mouthed, Imbued with the Power of her Prey, Bluejay and Hare, Whom she/Owl has Consumed so she May Rise in the Night Sky for a Magical Flight and Better View of Future Prey
Oil on Linen
17 x 20 inches
2016
Howler Monkey Sees Mary Magdalen's Altruism and Emboldens her to Give to Herself and Ecpress Loudly while Listening, Instructed by his Jungle Cry
Oil on Linen
15 x 20 inches
2015
Woman Resigned to Keeping the Company of Only Her Internal Buzzing and Stealthy, Though Somewhat Nectarious, Bodyguard
oil on canvas
10.7 x 14 inches
2009
Ashamed at Her Lack of Generosity Though Sticking to Her Guns, and Offering Some Leaves in Exchange for the Gift that Suggests that She reveal Herself
oil on canvas
10.25 x 13.5
2009