Awakening to Freedom. . . Returning Home

At about this age twelve years old I became keenly aware of a disharmony within my family. Home no longer felt safe, and I drew a sense of comfort, peace, and love by absorbing myself in Arizona's rich red rocks, vast skies, and endless desert. Soon circumstances forced us to move to the United Kingdom (UK), but before leaving, we decided to explore the state further. In one particularly poignant moment, I found myself standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, awestruck. Tears of wonder for this magnificent, boundless place fell, as the rich array of colors, smells, and textures pervaded my being. To be uprooted from such a place was a great loss. My aching for the desert never left me, and I determined to feel its peace and freedom again. Over the next twenty years in the UK, the desert continued to speak to me. It ignited my love affair with ceramics. Playing in red earth again brought back the desert's inspiration. New revelations were born in my summertime travels in Europe, where I explored the world of fine art in the Continent's great museums. Although I was studying three-dimensional design at Brighton Polytechnic, I sensed that the skills I was learning in wood, metal, ceramics, and plastics needed something more than decorative aesthetics to move me from the realm of craftsmanship to the realm of art. At the Louvre, the majesty, inner beauty, and power of the Egyptian collection fascinated me; the Cycladic idols communicated their sense of mystery, their simplicity of form; and the beautiful purity in the elongation of the Etruscan bronzes moved me deeply. I wanted to evoke in my own art the energy I felt emanating from these ancient artifacts.