A good song makes a soul want to sing. A delicious movement inspires the dancer, A great work of art becomes a muse of creativity. A well told story a beginning. From the beginning people have told myths and legends based in fact to explain the nature of their worlds. For example Celtic people told a story of the Silkie a magical creature who shed their seal skins to take human form allowing them to dance on moon lit beaches. When in human form they could take on mortal lovers and create families. Then they were caught between two worlds held by a bond of love and blood. They could never again be free continuing to protect their mortal decedents forever. I have referred to this myth among others, in these watery self portraits. Believing everyone has a legend of their own individual creation. It may be a very different version then what their family tells. That doesn’t make it a lie. It serves to explain the person from their own point of view. Showing how they fit in the greater whole. There is a myth of the secular in our societies. A separation of the physical and spiritual but I disagree. Every moment I am alive I am amazed by the fact of being alive. Every moment if I am awake to it, can be mystic. The spiritual permeates the physical to make this reality we experience together. I breath, think, feel, bleed, heal and I long to create yet, I can’t create anything that is alive. Or prove why I even exist. I must swim through a sea of physical and mental conditions that hold me apart in order to conduct myself normally in everyday society. It is easier for me to be physically naked then to put a voice to my experience. Being deeply private is at odds with my need to communicate what is happening in my intimate world so, my expression comes out in metaphors and riddles. In my image making I am telling of my life with my own mixed language. In this new body of work I am making reference too known mythologies mixing them into my own mystic story to creating a self legend. Moments are captured that may not be clear to the viewer. This invites them to their own interpretations. Still, they are moments that convey a more universal story of death, birth, life, pain, pleasure what it is to be female, to be human and to be alive. I shot these self portraits with a small hand held digital camera so that it was never more then arms length from me.
