River of My Art

“Art is highest form of hope.”

-Gerhard Richter

Welcome to my website. I am a self-taught artist and I work primarily with watercolors and mixed media. When I was in my early twenties I created a piece of artwork that profoundly affected the trajectory of my life and has touched the lives of thousands of people in deeply personal and meaningful ways. This is the story of that artwork.

Life is a mystery. As an artist, I have found it essential to embrace the mystery. I have been drawing since I could hold a pencil. So I guess you could say, I didn’t choose art, art chose me. It is impossible for me to imagine a life without making art. Art is a vehicle of human expansion and evolution of consciousness.. My art reveals things inside me that need to be shared. And even more, it provides a portal or conduit for ideas and creations that are from a source that is much bigger than me.

THE ENIGMA

It has been more than four decades since an enigma came to me through my art. I discovered it quite by accident. I happened to pick up one of my sketchbooks from the year prior and as I flipped through, I noticed doodled stick figures scattered throughout the pages. They were connected somehow, so I drew them out in a horizontal line. That is when I saw something astonishing. The stick figures were telling a story! The figures had been drawn over a period of time and appeared randomly among my other sketches and musings, so they were not preconceived.

The line of figures flowed like a dance. There was movement in each figure and there was a sense of flow from one to the next. Although I did not really understand it, I could feel it and I knew instinctively that it was not complete. As I looked at the ten figures in a row, I could see that there needed to be at least one more figure for it to be complete. Since these figure symbols had come to me without conscious intention, I knew I could not just invent another symbol on my own.

I kept hoping it would come to me, but nothing. Some time passed and one day I was watching an episode of my favorite television show at the time. The name of the show was Fame and it was a series about a dance school. There was a scene where the character played by Debbie Allen (the amazing dancer and choreographer) was dancing her heart out alone in a studio. She struck a pose for a split second as she started across the floor. That was it! It was the missing figure. Immediately I sketched it out and it became the 11th and final figure to complete what I would later title Seasons of the Soul.

A LIFE OF ITS OWN

Seasons of the Soul Is a pictographic story of transformation and becoming. It reflected my own inner struggles with self-acceptance and identity during the time it was created. Over time I began to realize the artwork revealed natural cycles in my life. Other people identified with it in regards to their own lives. I began creating original watercolor and ink paintings with the figures in a horizontal line. In some of them, I started adding subtitles under the figures. Some people requested the artwork to be made without the subtitles as they preferred to interpret their own meaning for each figure. Over time some of the subtitles have been changed but the figures remain true to their original form.

Seasons of the Soul was published as an open edition hand-signed lithograph in the early 1990s. In the years that followed, more than 4,000 of the prints have been bought. Many of those were purchased by professionals to hang in their office. Among those professions were therapists, counselors, ministers, doctors, massage therapists, Reiki practitioners, and others in the healing arts.

TESTIMONIALS AND TATTOOS

Not long after Seasons of the Soul was published as a print I received a phone call from a woman who had purchased one of the hand-painted original Seasons of the Soul paintings. She had been trying to track me down for some time. This was before cell phones and internet. She shared that she had struggled with addiction. And had purchased one of the paintings when I was selling art on the sidewalk on Ninth Street in Durham, North Carolina. She said the artwork had been incredibly meaningful to her during her recovery. She was wanting to buy one of the Seasons of the Soul prints to give to a friend who was in the midst of their own struggle with addiction in hopes it would help them also.

In the time since it was published, several people have reached out to me to share their story of how Seasons of the Soul was a positive catalyst during a difficult period in their life. One of the stories that I will never forget was from a woman who had survived two consecutive bouts with cancer. She told me the artwork represents hope and healing and helped her keep going as she looked at it every day.

Another story that touched me deeply was from a woman who emailed me to request a Seasons of the Soul print. I asked her how she had found out about the art and she told me she had seen out in a therapist’s office. She had recently lost her son in a tragic freak accident. She wrote that she just wanted to sit and stare at it. Since she lived in the area, she wanted to meet me to pick up the print instead of shipping it. When I met her, she was in so much emotional pain that she could not even speak. As I handed her the print all I could do was put my hand on my heart and nod to her.

While grocery shopping one day, a woman approached me and asked if I was the artist who created Seasons of the Soul. When I said yes, she turned around to show me the back of her calves and there was a Seasons of the Soul figure tattooed on each of her legs! Then a few months later I happened to see that same woman an I waved. She hurried over smiling and said, I have a story to tell you! She had gone to Oregon to visit a friend. When she arrived at her friend’s home and the front door opened, there on the foyer wall was a framed Seasons of the Soul print. She excitedly showed her friend her tattoos to which her friend turned around and lifted her shirt to reveal a Seasons of the Soul tattoo on her back! I love that story so much.

Many other people have gotten tattoos of the Seasons of the Soul figure(s) that they connected with the most. Some have contacted me to ask permission. A friend of mine had the rebirth figure tattooed on one shoulder and harmony on the other. He told me that he had gone on a cruise and he had attended one of the events onboard where they asked for a volunteer from the audience. He said he was wearing a tank top and as he stepped up on the stage someone from the audience yelled out, I have that print!

THE DANCE

In 2014 I was contacted by Yasmin Tarlton, the Dance Director at Myers Park High School in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was seeking permission to use Seasons of the Soul as inspiration to choreograph a dance with her high school dance troupe for performance at the 2014 Spring Concert which I was honored to attend. Ms. Tarlton told me the student dancers had helped choreograph the dance and in preparation had shared how they personally related to each of the figure symbols. As I watched the performance, I was thrilled to see the poses for each figure embedded in the dance. It was an unforgettable experience.

LATE NIGHT CALLING

Inspiration found me late one night around midnight. I was just about to turn off the light at my drawing table and head to bed when out of the blue I received an inspiration to start drawing a concept for a new Seasons of the Soul painting. The energy was strong and emphatic. I quickly gathered markers, scissors, and paper. I could see in my mind’s eye the figure symbols arranged in a spiral and each figure was surrounded by a block of luminous color. I created and cut out the colored rectangles with each figure and then arranged them in a spiral formation. I glued them to a paper board and then sat back and looked at what had just happened.

I liked how the spiral formation illustrated the natural expansion and growth as we become more and more aligned with our true Self. I wanted to see this design as a finished painting. I knew I wanted the blocks of color with the figures to stand out against a darker background. I also knew that I wanted the background to have a more ancient mysterious feel compared to the sleek stylized figures. Sometimes I know the “feel” of an artistic creation I want to make before I have a clear idea of what it will look like. It is a process that can take weeks and months. A lot of times I have to put the painting aside and work on something else so I can go back to it later with a fresh perspective. The design evolved into a finished painting that I was pleased with and I decided to publish it as a fine art print titled, Seasons of the Soul: The Spiral Dance.

BECOMING

A wise woman once said to me,”your art is your teacher.” Seasons of the Soul has been a part of my life for more than forty years. Where artistic inspiration comes from is still a mystery to me. Through my own growth and experience I have learned that understanding my emotions changes everything. Each figure symbol stands for an emotional state in a continuum. I guess the most important thing I have learned from Seasons of the Soul is that I must make peace with where I am to move forward. I know that I can not choose my specific thoughts, but I do have the power to influence the direction of the thoughts I am thinking. Seasons of the Soul shows a path of personal transformation and becoming. It is also a story of self-love, self-acceptance, and hope.

A good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.

-Carl Rogers