Three years old. Belly on the floor, my crayon in hand.

My mother scrunches down from her squeaky rocking chair, strokes my back whispering, "You're such a good little artist."

Her last words I remember spoken.

Then Cancer came. Quickly. Stole her Spirit. And wrenched her body from me.

How did I make sense of my blood and bones, my origin, my own life disappearing? The Catholic elders hoped to give baby me hope: "Mommy went to live with God in the clouds." So I screamed my hatred, mistrust and pain at the clouds and at God: "Give her back to me. You don't need her. I do..."

My voice eventually shifted from screaming at clouds to listening on paper. With crayons. Pen. Grass stains. Later ink and paint.

I spoke to the heavens. The Trees. The Water. I studied every Cloud. I waited and pleaded for every god, and longed for my Mother's voice to whisper through the wind.

Decades later, I still find her Presence, and Life itself, in the Sky.

Before knowing spoken word or language, I expressed through art. I have never stopped. I eternally trust the non-words that color, mark, form, intuition, movement, and inquiry convey as my inner life.

Recently, I learned my family originates in Northern New Mexico. My great-great-grandmother, Cornelia Veronica Trujillo, departed via Old Santa Fe Trail to St. Louis in the 1850s. Her blood and bones emerged from this high desert. As I now know, so do my own.

In 2003, my rental car leapt over La Bajada displaying the majesty of Santa Fe. I felt a visceral crack in my chest... the breathtaking light, the bleeding mountains, the dusk offering color like a cathedral offering prayer. I felt something ancient. Unquestionable. New Mexico. True.

My bones knew before I did.

I am not an artist attempting to interpret mortality through art.

Art was my first language. Responding to mortality was my first creative act; when loss taught me death, drawing taught me to breathe, line by line, color by color. (It is still my oldest and wisest friend.)

My landscapes are not decorative. They are devotional.

My work exists where beauty meets urgency, and silence meets fury.

These paintings are not depictions of place as much as they are states of Being.

Every color is a prayer. Every sky is a conversation with this fragile life and the many dead Ones I carry. Nothing ends. Cycles turn. Seasons of life. Seasons of death.

May my Serene Landscapes in Fierce Color offer you refuge, breath, curiosity, restoration, and peace.