As a child I was very influenced by my dreams. They were so interesting and significant, I would wake up changed from the experience, having visited spaces that took my breath away — only to see that the waking world did not accept what happened at night as anything significant or important. I could never explain to anyone how amazing it was and eventually learned to discount the dreams as adults did, but it left a hole in my life.
I was one of many children in a huge clan of scientists and I always envied my parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts for their passion for sciences. They lived (and still live) as explorers for whom the world is an endless, fascinating puzzle, unfolding and ever tantalizing. I, however, for many years could not find my own passion. I always drew, and even took drawing classes, but had not taken my little attempts very seriously, until one day, years later, separated from my family, living in the U.S., with the future utterly unknown and scary, I made my first sculpture – a tiny thing out of air-dry clay. It was alive and it looked back at me. That was one of those moments when you suddenly know, without any doubt, that you found it: your life. In subsequent years, I went to Art School and loved every minute of it.
I took every drawing class twice...some even six times. I really wanted to know how to capture the movement of living things. I had absolutely no ambition to be “the best artist in the world” or to go into the annals of art history, I just wanted to know how things move and drawing provided that knowledge. I found that in the process of drawing I merged with my object and felt it from the inside. Dreaming came back to me with double the intensity; and drawing and dreaming often merged. As I got technically better, more assured and competent, art became a means to an end, the same excitement of exploration that my parents derived from science came to me from the intuitive side. I used the art processes as the way of knowing, discerning the underlined patterns of the world around and inside me.
Then several years ago, while visiting in CA, shopping for books with my daughter, I happened to walk by the section of “esoterica” and I picked up a small book on shamanism. I opened the book on the section called “the Soul retrieval journey” and I knew immediately that this was my language. The modus operandi of a shaman, in its essence, was my mode of existence. I suddenly had words for things I was unconsciously doing all my life. To the great consternation of many friends and family I went further and further in that direction, devouring books, taking classes and most importantly practicing consciously. I found that the psychic space of creation while drawing or painting, the coveted Zone, is in essence the ecstatic state that the shaman uses to enter into different realities, or open doors for other realities to come into him. Only being an artist, you have the added benefit of having a visual record.
The work you will find on this site is the result of that ecstatic state. No, I do not beat my chest and run around chanting; I don’t need to, I just start drawing and the space of dreams opens up. I hope you enjoy it. More work will be added, as it develops.