In my art, I focus on art history, the lovely brushstrokes of Van Gogh or the colors of Monet, and the passion and perseverance of Frida Kahlo. My current passion is to teach and mentor my art students. I teach them the importance of understanding what art is; it’s a way to express your own technique, style, and skill. Once a student understands his or her own talent, then the sky is the limit.

My school showcases the students’ work through Artsonia, local art shows, and Meet and Greets with their family and friends at our school gymnasium. We also have many city-wide contests, shows, and events for them. This summer myself my students and I have been invited to the Mission Trail Art Show, and Cloudcroft, New Mexico Christmas in July Jamboree.

Now, during my summer break, I’m doing a lot of en plein air work here in West Texas and the Southern New Mexico region.

When I was seven years old, my father, an artist himself, brought me to a ceramic studio for the very first time. I had a severe stutter as a child, and this early exposure to my craft taught me a whole new way to communicate with the world around me. Later in life, I encountered folk art in the form of my grandmother’s heirloom 19th-century Judaica pieces, which depicted old homes, nature, and mythical beasts. I was further inspired by the work of Grandma Moses, because her unique style resonated with me and helped shape the way I imbued my paintings of the long-ago shtetl with warmth.

My final influence happened almost by accident; my background in sculpture and ceramics allowed me to study with the sculptor Lavinsky, who was the great artist Mayakovksy’s son. Lavinsky’s studio was where I experienced Russian futurism first-hand, and saw Miakhovsky’s poetry performed, which taught me how to look at the world around me with both a poet’s and a painter’s eyes.

My art absorbed those influences to form a unique window into a magical Jewish folk world filled with mythical birds, fish, unicorns, swans, lions, and of course, the everyday people who coexist with the Divine in the melody of nuances inherent in traditional Jewish life. Using traditional oil and canvas, I express my inner world – one that is a reflection of a time and place that has been destroyed but lives on in a beautiful culture that survives despite persecution, repression, and Soviet ideology.

I believe in animism—the understanding that everything, living or inanimate, possesses a spirit.
This belief shapes my approach to art, where photography becomes a way of revealing the energy flowing through all things.

Light is not just a tool but the essence of this spirit, illuminating what often remains unseen.
Yet the unseen is not separate from the real. The surreal and the spiritual are often one and the same, emerging from the liminal space between perception and mystery. It is within this space that my work unfolds—where forms dissolve, the ordinary shifts, and hidden connections quietly reveal themselves.

Whether working in analog or digital, my process is slow and meditative, allowing each image to unfold naturally. I am drawn to abstract forms, portraits, and nature—subjects that blur the boundary between the visible and the invisible.

Black and white distills moments into their purest form, while color deepens the emotional and spiritual tone of an image. Photography continues its magic in the darkroom or on the screen, where light reveals a truth that has always existed beneath the surface.

Inspired by the teachings of the Buddha, I seek to create stillness—a pause for reflection in a turbulent world. My work invites viewers to sense the quiet forces holding everything together and to glimpse the harmony that exists beyond what is immediately seen.

For me, photography is meditation: a practice of presence, a way of listening.
An offering—
a window into the spirit that is everything.

My painting journey has been a transformative testament to my life’s intricacies. As a constant companion since childhood, it’s become a medium of expression, an unfolding narrative deeply woven into my existence, primarily revolving around migration, the immigrant experience, and love. Born in Ethiopia, I’ve been on a 28-year-long odyssey in the U.S. These years have spun a rich, varied tapestry of encounters—embracing challenges, relishing promises, surmounting obstacles, bridging cultural divides, and fighting injustices. In my isolation from family, the local community emerged as a nurturing home away from home.

I’ve been moved by the extraordinary women’s empowerment I’ve observed, culminating in an unconventional understanding of love, one that transcends borders and blooms into sisterhood. These profound instances of affection frequently find their way into my paintings.

As an African lesbian woman, I’ve faced significant challenges, including the fear of coming out and living a perpetual charade conforming to heteronormative expectations, especially during visits to my home country. Despite this, I’ve built a resilient support system of empathetic individuals, their narratives mirrored in my art as I delve into the multifaceted reality of womanhood and love’s dimensions.

My art, although not bound by a specific style, explores subjects that resonate with me deeply, with each brush stroke representing my perceptions and experiences. My ultimate artistic aim is to encapsulate and represent the experiences, emotions, and narratives that have molded my identity.

October has always felt like a threshold, a month that carries us from the fullness of light into the quiet of darker days. It is not only a season of endings but also a season of beginnings, when the air sharpens, and the world slows, asking us to notice the beauty in transition. This painting was created as a reflection of that moment, when fire and sky, solitude and song, memory and presence meet in balance.

The night is vast, filled with deep indigo and scattered stars, a sky that feels larger in October than at any other time of the year. The crescent moon watches with a thin arc of light while a small planet burns steadily nearby. Together they remind us of the endless cycles above and within us, how time continues even as seasons fade. October has always spoken to me through these symbols, showing that nothing is fixed, that change itself is what holds us steady.

At the heart of the painting is a solitary figure seated beside a fire, a guitar resting in their hands. They are not alone in spirit, even if no one else shares the space. The fire is a companion, the night sky another, and the music yet another. October is a month when sound seems to carry further, where a few notes strummed into the cool air linger long after the hand leaves the strings. The guitar becomes a bridge between the inner world of reflection and the outer world of stars and earth.

The fire is more than light or warmth. It is a ritual, a gathering point, and a metaphor for October itself. Sparks rise into the dark like leaves caught in an upward wind, reminding us that all things move in cycles of release and renewal. The glow reaches outward across the ground, coloring it with shifting shades of amber, orange, and gold, echoing the tones of the season. To sit beside such a fire in October is to sit within the month’s essence: fleeting warmth, quiet transformation, and the invitation to pause before winter takes hold.

Though the scene shows a single figure, it is not a picture of loneliness. Instead, it is about communion with the earth, with memory, with unseen presence. October has always carried the sense that the veil between worlds is thinner, that voices of the past and whispers of what is to hover close around us. The act of playing music to the fire and the night becomes a gesture of connection, as if the song could rise with the sparks and become part of the larger rhythm of the season.

The textures and colors were chosen to reflect the raw quality of October. The graininess of the sky, the rough strokes of the ground, and the stark brilliance of flame against shadow create a sense of a world in transition. October does not offer polished certainty but instead an unfinished beauty. It asks us to honor the moment in between, to value both the fading of light and the persistence of song.

This painting is my meditation on October, a month that teaches us to embrace impermanence with wonder.

In my creation process, I use different media: Oil on canvas, collages, acrylic on canvas, and mixed technique: Oil pastels, watercolors, and acrylic on paper. For many years my favorite technique was collages. In order to achieve the richness of the surface, I use textiles, mirrors, wood, photos, and sawdust, and at the end of the creation process, I paint with Oil colors. The picture’s physical body juxtaposes and suffuses each part of the painting and veritably forms jazz of the visual performance.

My inspirations come from travels, music, art, literature, and nature, also from the unknown fields of consciousness and unconsciousness. I usually listen to my inner voice. Another source of my inspiration is my stresses and losses. About 15 years ago I had a very bad period in my life, but I think, all pressures and anxieties regenerated and retransformed my inner into the next level of deeper understanding. In England I discovered a new way how to express myself in the fields of the visual art.

In order to achieve a particular expression and to show the inner and the spirit of the object, I stylize, reshape forms of the nature in my own unique way. All about connections with the objects continuously. Also, I am aiming at the resemblance I am observing nature and objects and transferring into the canvas through signs.

I never stick with one stylistic manner or technique for a long time. I always try to express myself in different ways. Some of my artworks have elements of impressionism, or pointillism, and others – surrealism. But I do not follow any particular stream.

Black and White Print Negative and Positive Transfers from original images taken from 1850-1960, transferred in the darkroom onto Ilford Black and White Glossy RC Paper, 16×20
January 2025 – April 2025

Humans hold onto photographs, items, and objects that hold memories or stories of the loved ones who have passed away. We may have no actual connection to the physical person who once held these narratives, yet because the stories were explained to us, or because we have been told they are connected to our family, we keep them. Without these explanations or experiences, items that we find in attics, homes, or spaces that need to be cleaned out would be considered junk and often would be tossed away.

My grandfather passed away in 2024, and when he moved out of his home and into a care center, I acquired many of our family photo albums. Some images were of my family from the 1850s through the early 1900s. These people are strangers to me. While my grandmother was still alive, I decided to take these photographs and ask about the story behind them, and she shared with me my grandfather’s lineage and family history. These photographs are more impactful to me now; however, the people are still unknown to me personally.

The more distant these narratives are, the more unclear the stories resonate with me. We assume or hope that our family history includes ‘good’ and ‘decent’ people, but the truth is, we will never know. The closer the timeline gets to our time of living, the more we are familiar with the setting, characters in our story, and the situations that came about. I take these found images and create photographic negative and positive prints before placing them onto a larger sheet in the darkroom. Each sheet is set within a specific decade of time from what was labeled when I found them. The more unfamiliar I am with the images, the more blurry or unfamiliar they are presented to the viewer. Leaving some images that are unknown in negative form, mixed with some images in a positive print, gives the viewer an insight into how familiar I am with some of these people and stories about them. However, without these handed-down tales or questions I asked, these stories would die with those who were told them last. Without my questions, these stories would die, and without me telling anyone else about them, these stories will end with me.

“I am a Navajo woman with German ancestry who grew up in Window Rock, Arizona, and throughout my many years of an environmental career, I am a cancer survivor from chemotherapy in 2020 and again in 2021.

I began to work on the arts for painting and crafts in 1995. I create artwork using watercolors, acrylics, and graphic art. My craft is custom jewelry. I continue to write poems, short stories, and one book, with another being developed. I enjoy photography while traveling, and it is great to find moments in time captured by my camera. Juried art shows were in New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, California, Washington, DC, and New York. I enjoy providing my art for others, including art demonstrations if an opportunity arises, and juried art shows”.

I compose bright, surprising settings like a luxury jewel box and assimilate my interiors to unknown sanctuaries with high vibes by metabolizing my experiences, observations, and impressions into interior pictures. I compose collage elements, sea creatures, plants, and images from art history into new spatial structures and give rebirth to the classical interior. In my highly detailed paintings, with their tapestry-like designs, you will find interiors with fish, leopards, Chinese porcelain, ceramics, baroque furniture, and retro-style influences. Everything in my paintings is playful, ambiguous, and multi-layered. I love variations within a theme and image quotations. My artwork is much more than an assemblage of colors and patterns to please the eye. I build new environments that relate to nothing seen before. I want my pure aesthetic energy to flow out of my artwork and brighten the viewer’s mind with pure buzz and pleasant excitement.

I love to break the traditional methods of spatial visualization and the three-dimensional physical illusions of a room to make the viewer’s perception of reality absurd. I want to allow my audience to look behind the bare, well-known pictorial sphere by leaving behind the classically taught composition and inventing more layers within the two-dimensional canvas. Sometimes I enlarge the interior space through perspective illusions and add collage elements, which I collect every day, for additional connotation. By breaking the classical view, I can generate a new experience for my audience, pointing them to emotional reality. I turn my motives into bright, cheering works of art, like an explosion of colors and organic shapes. Everybody is welcome to participate.

Creating is like breathing.
Painting is surviving.

The painting process itself is of the utmost importance in my daily life. Painting is comparable to breathing for me. I like to plunge into my painting process as others fall into a pool. Creating a new image is an effort to balance between visualizing and reflecting on my surroundings and emotions. The subjects of my work reflect a myriad of daily impressions from traveling and being in motion. While painting, I get an extraordinary sense of personal and creative freedom. From the basic idea of perspective, I developed the layout of the constructed space, which I am wallpapering. I overpaint my interior compositions with an old master glaze technique and a structure of shadows and complementary colors to increase the luminosity of my work. I capture detailed and precise moments that bring a fresh and intriguing perspective to the world’s reality. As the viewer sees now existing in a different light, context, or resolution, familiar objects appear as something new.