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My work grows out of my interest in pilgrimage. A pilgrimage to Greece in 1993 started me on a path that has continued to this day. What followed that pilgrimage was a persistent dream that was to define my work. It was a dream of a light-filled bowl. Other pilgrimages have included visiting Shiva temples in South India on a trip led by a mystical author, searching for wild peonies in Tibet with Chinese botanists, and travelling with Sufi scholars to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the birth of the poet, Rumi in Konya. Each time I return from a pilgrimage, I sit and digest the experience, waiting for an image to come to me that will be universal in nature and describe the essence of the journey. Sometimes the images are water lilies or ceramic pottery or canoes, but always they are images of light that emerge from darkness. With my background in Clinical Psychology, I am especially interested in the work of psychologist Carl Jung and his theory of archetypes, the universal patterns of what it means to be human. As I continued to paint and research the symbol of the vessel over the years, it became the foundation of my work. Jung said that a ‘symbol not only points to another reality, it also participates in that other reality…it provides a bridge to another reality.”1 Marie Louise von Franz, in her book, The Grail Legend, says that, “The symbolic meaning of the vessel goes back to the earliest of times and can therefore be termed an archetypal conception.” “Divested of the personal and viewed as an object, the vessel does not explicitly represent a human reality, but rather an idea, a primal image. As such, it is of universal significance and is found in untold myths, legends and fairy-tales….Thus, in nearly all mythologies there is a miraculous vessel. Sometimes it dispenses youth and life, at other times it possesses the power of healing, and occasionally, as with the mead cauldron of the Nordic Ymir, inspiring strength and wisdom are to be found in it. Often, especially as a cooking pot, it effects transformations; by this attribute it achieved exceptional renown as the vas Hermetis of alchemy."2 Just as the Grail took many forms as the legend was told and retold, including a chalice, a cauldron, a stone/meteorite, or the womb of Mary Magdalene, in my work the “vessel” also takes several forms such as a pottery bowl or vase, a flower, a lotus or a canoe. I am working with the idea of a search for the grail within, an inner journey or pilgrimage of transformation. In some of my paintings, I layer veils of pattern over and under the vessel image in order to suggest moving between levels of reality…into the mythological. This layering sets up interplay between a three-dimensional surface and a plane. Baroque painting, (especially Dutch Baroque) with its use of chiaroscuro and colour has influenced my painting technique, particularly the monochromatic paintings of Rembrandt. I have begun writing short fictional narratives that accompany my paintings in the manner of photographers Kahn+Selesnick, to create a written mythology…a myth within a myth. The parable itself operates as a vessel to contain the work. Repetition is important—repeated images, and repeated patterns—like a simple drumbeat, which can evoke a meditative state of mind, as in the bottles of Georgio Morandi or the lines of Agnes Martin. “The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.”3
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