This exhibition contains work using media that is new to me as well as media I have revisited in the past (encaustic and charcoal); and work using imagery that is new to me, as well as what I have repeatedly explored in the past. All the work is strongly influenced by my experience with T'ai Chi over the last few years.  Both these recent series are about gathering, dropping, holding and moving energy; about using and balancing opposing vectors. 

The use of the classical Chinese elements of Earth and Wood in the large scale drawings and the language of early Renaissance drapery as a means of recording/mapping the shift of contained energy in the small scale encaustics, represent parallel expressions of the same idea.  In T’ai Chi, the central place where one’s personal energy is held is called the Dan Tien―deep in the abdomen.  The practitioner drops her center of gravity by folding the Kua (the area of the hip joint or inguinal fold) in, and focuses on the Dan Tien being expressed outward from the trunk in the movement of the arms and legs.  I see this where the Wood of a tree meets the Earth and takes root; and also in the "break" of a fold.  Standing in the cathedral at Assisi, surrounded by Giotto frescos, I felt captivated by the earnest energy in the drapery which seemed to chart interior shifts.