Years ago I had a series of dreams. In each dream, different ancestors came to me, telling me to "uncover" them and to "reclaim" my heritage. Sometimes they came in the form of animals, sometimes they came as themselves, but always they would plead with me to uncover them, reveal them and claim my heritage.
This painting is a part of a series called the Spirit of Nature. Is is an internal self-portrait of the way I see my spirit. In this painting, a sophisticated woman has lived her life trying to fit into society and to acceptable things, but the call of the wild, of her ancestral background, grows so strong that she now sits overlooking the Red River Gorge (located in Eastern Kentucky) while a black snake, a symbol of her Catawba (the Black Snake Society) warrior lineage, crawls silently on the rocks about her. The mist calls to her. The rocks, the trees, the earth all speak to her and the wild of the gorge pulls her to let go and become a true self, throwing off society's image (symbolized by the evening gown.)
In this painting I wanted earthy, rich colors from Rublev's Masters Series.