Infusion Gallery . Los Angeles

Statement and Background

I use elements of realism, symbolism, and surrealism, in my work, which is usually figurative. I focus on the female form— highlighting her strengths, and exposing her vulnerabilities. My images are intended to be empowering representations of women.
The images often have political and spiritual themes that seek to make visible what is otherwise unseen. It is my hope that they challenge the typical mainstream views of women, and inspire the observer to ‘see’ women in another way.
My painting medium is oil on canvas.
My current work is a series of graphite and colored pencil on paper. I have used space, dark or light and plays of shadows around and on the figures, to express the subject’s state of mind and her internal struggles and triumphs.
My figures are sometimes shown in relationship to nature. Often they are integrated with, or in symbiotic relationship to, animals and other life forms.
Some of my work is executed with the immediacy of explosive movement, using Sumie Ink and other water-based mediums. This work is impressionistic and usually abstract.
I also have a history of performance art and theater work that informs my painting and drawing.
My interest in art began at an early age through the encouragement and instruction of my father. I attended Valley Junior College, Pierce College, and Cal State Northridge as an Art major. Around the same time I became head designer at Zox Studios—an Airbrush Studio in Woodland Hills, California. I was forced to discontinue my college education because my work there, and my subsequent work as a freelance commercial artist, was keeping me so busy.
My real training in art has come from the world of design and commercial work.
In the early 1980s I ended my commercial and graphic arts career in order to devote my time to painting and drawing.
My art has been deeply affected, informed, and inspired by a number of formative activities I have been involved in over the past twenty-five years: I am a teacher in the martial arts (Aikido and Iaido sword), and also a teacher of Buddhist Meditation. (I co-founded a retreat center in the mountains of Southern California). I have worked extensively with youth at risk in the inner cities, juvenile justice systems, probation camps and community-based programs, and on Indian reservations.
In addition, woven throughout my work are elements born out of my mixed heritage—Japanese, North African and European-American—and my identity as a woman of color.
I was born in California in 1955. I grew up in Los Angeles, and have traveled extensively in Asia and Europe. I currently live in the Vallé de San José in northeastern San Diego County.

“Backbone” is a study of woman. Classical western art has often depicted singular deeds through images that emphasize the heroic figure in all its magnificence. “Backbone” is not about the heroism of women; it is about her natural strength.

This work is mostly black-and-white, penciled figurative realism, depicting women, viewed mainly from the back. The vast space around the figures invites the viewer to look at each one as in a single moment in time, and to glimpse the woman’s internal space, which is private and uniquely her own.

These women are not strong because of the clothes or uniform they wear, or because of their class or the position they hold. Most of them are nude, shown in their vulnerability. Their strength is revealed through the forms of back, arms, hands and legs, depicting in turn a record of their triumph over despair and grief; the victory of internal strength, of creativity and love, over anger and rage.

The spine supports our body and allows us to stand upright. It is flexible. Our nervous system weaves through it like a river. Other rivers, arteries and veins, carry our lifeblood along its length, to sustain our entire body. The human body is made up of countless elements, and its ‘meaning’ is more than mechanical function. We all have a backbone, and it extends beyond the visible into memory and all the stories of our life.

These drawings are stories of woman’s backbone.