Leaving the Path

Consciousness, Creativity and Freedom

Embarking on a new phase, I feel compelled to simultaneously invest in very specific intention with my identity and communication while engaging in complete freedom of expression and interest. I’d like to lighten up the pressure and open up the narrative.

An Act of Healing

The “hero” is based on things going wrong. I am fascinated by the idea that if you do things right, no one notices, because the wrong never happened in the first place, therefore no hero was required.

The whole hero concept to me is violent, a narrative of war. We keep telling the same story, so we keep doing the same things. What if we tell different stories? So, I am interested in how stories work and don’t work. I am interested in how stories affect people and how they think they affect people. I am interested in strategy.

Story strategy.

I think it’s time, she said
It’s been long enough
Staying the course
Waiting for the moment
Leave the path

Creating Space

I am interested in what this next phase is about. I knew before my exhibition coming up on three years ago that it was the threshold. It had to be done in order to see. See where I was and see what was beyond.

It’s been a lot.

But I have created space. For myself, my identity and my practice. In the way that I need it to be. And so it seems, anything is possible. It’s just a matter of what is real now.

Challenging Systems, Ideologies and Cultures of Oppression

It’s a commitment to create one’s own way in the midst of established systems that define what it means to be an artist.

There is significant push back against a sense of self that is not dependent upon the mechanisms of commerce and culture. There is so much taken as granted, and challenges are funneled into acceptable formats. Contained. Sanitized while praised.

It grows tiresome to continually be the other. The challenge.

But this tiredness is also due to my own sense of conflict and so I return my focus inward and remember to stay within reality and not get pulled into the pressure to maintain a false sense of self for the comfort of others which is the illusion of comfort for myself.

Three Poppies

ANTIBODY

California Poppy representing anicca (impermanence)

Photographed in my secret garden in 2013, this image catalyzed my photographic journey through years of disability and isolation. It symbolizes anicca because of my realization that this truth is the greatest protection from psychological manipulation.

2013 was the year I chose the Peaceful Path deciding that the fight had become a trap. I could not win my freedom, I had to become it.

My experiences through this period are difficult to describe or explain. They are documented in photographs, this journey that began at birth but was kept hidden for a long time.

Sometimes it seems strange that I should keep working, it doesn’t seem to have a place in the world. My pace is too slow. But today I feel hopeful that all action and commitment is of value, seen and unseen.

The point is being. The world is not up to me. Whether or not I find a place in it is not the point. The point was always what is real. That is the source of my sense of self. That is my focus and intention. That is why.

Peace

BE HERE NOW

Bread Seed Poppy representing dukkha (suffering)

Rising to the present is not enforcing a particular image of an ideology. It is being it. This is in practice and action. In the dissolving of any separation.

The peaceful path is everything. Every thing.

SEEKING PEACE

Matilija Poppy representing anatta (no self)

I believe in a new peace movement. I have believed in it my entire life. I have been waiting.

Compassion

I extend an invitation in this new cycle to embrace peace.

Peace is powerful. It is the answer to a no win situation. The antidote to illusion. It is an invitation to the impossible. It is seeing reality as it is.

It is challenging. It is not absolute. It is a commitment. A vision. And this is quite powerful also. And necessary.

“And they who have considered all the contrasts on this earth, and is no more disturbed by anything whatever in the world, the Peaceful One, freed from rage, from sorrow, and from longing, they have passed beyond birth and decay.”

~ Siddhartha Gautama Buddha