I sprung from a seed, long ago, in a place of great darkness, giddy with life. Green vines entwined me, binding me to Earth. The very air I breathed was seeds. Copulating insects rose in clouds around me as I lay nose to the green breast of the great chthonic mother who is Earth. As insignificant as a seed, and just as important, I watched the seasons change, from birth to death and back again, an endless progression. Saint Eve was my primary deity, the lady of dandelions, the mother of blackberries, holding court in the alive, dense, green black darkness near the river. I was a Catholic school girl once. The mass was celebrated daily in the holy womb of the church, smelling of frankincense, reverberating with the murmured pleadings of the faithful, both dead and present. The Mea Culpa became my continual prayer. Stern saints shadowed me, writing down my every misdeed in gilt edged volumes. I alone was responsible for the suffering of Christ. Here, too, was beauty. Bright, caring angles hovered over me and candles in little red glass cups could be lit to influence one’s case with the Blessed Virgin in her beautiful pale blue robes of polychrome plaster. I dream that I meet Gauguin in a catacomb under the street of a small town near my childhood home. He does not speak , but he smiles his approval at me. I dream that a ceremonial barge floats on a river with a banner flying over it inscribed with the words “J’ai Puissance”. I dream that I make sculptures of blackberries and rusted iron, that Shiva dances in and pours bright jewels into my hands. They fall through my fingers. That which is dear to me is shattered and lost. I swim from the wreckage through thick, glassy water to watch the fantastic bloomings of new things unfold. I can hold onto nothing. I have become so small that I am no longer an offense to God. And God, who has many faces, appears to me small and forbearing and infinitely generous and he ceases t bean offense to me. The pictures that I paint are stories that I tell myself as I try to integrate the conflicting streams of influence in my life: dreams, my childhood religion, the dark and continual mystery of the natural world. Flames bloom from the sacred heart of Christ, all life is contained in the anonymous, tiny packet of the seed. Somehow these two images intersect to become one and the same. Eve, who was once held in disgrace, now rules.