I wish I were a storyteller. I wish I were articulate enough to bend the ears and capture the imaginations of those around me with my tales of life and love and legacy, to have my words flow from my lips like a mountain stream trickling around rocks and roots, collecting into a crystal clear mirrored pool in the valley.
I am not. There is this disconnect between my brain and my heart, between my brain and my soul. I have tremendous difficulty deciphering my own hopes and dreams, let alone spinning a yarn that will hold captive the minds of others. But sometimes, things click. The pawls align, the gears engage, and an image flows from my hand like that stream from the mountaintop. Collecting its tributaries one after the other, building in volume and strength, becoming a powerful river until it pours onto paper like so much water into that lake in the valley. Often, I have to keep these images close by, constantly looking for that place in my mind or my heart or my soul where they might have come from. But they don't seem to fit anywhere very neatly. They do, however fit in between. Between my heart and soul, between my heart and mind, between waking and dreams, between disappointment and regret, between life and death, between sin and redemption.
They narrate for me what my words could not; what my mind or heart or soul could not have done alone. They pull from all sources the shattered pieces and make them whole, to make available to the viewer that which sloshes around inside me like a whirlpool. When asked what my work is about, I used to say that if I had the words to describe it, I wouldn't need to make the pictures to begin with. But that is a cheap cop out. It isn't true. My work is about where people live. Not on the mountaintop, or the pool in the valley, but on the slopes. In between.
Maybe I am a storyteller...
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