I don’t make art to explain myself.
I make it to uncover what I couldn’t say any other way.
My work lives in the space between symbolic language and the stories I’ve had to unravel—especially the ones I once mistook for truth. Each piece is a dialogue with experience. Sometimes painful. Sometimes a missing part of the whole, a key to understanding.
Always something that needs to surface. and always a pattern revealed through color, shape, and material. Whether it’s a wrapped doll, a portrait in graphite, or a mixed-media piece that doesn’t fit neatly into a category, the work isn’t just mine. It becomes yours the moment you recognize yourself in it.
Yes, I express what’s inside of me. But I’ve learned something after decades of surviving trauma and working with others who’ve done the same: we are not as alone, or as different, as we think. The aftermath echoes. The pain rearranges itself into similar shapes. And so the symbols speak across our individual lives—and back into the collective.
This category—More Than Art—exists to explore what happens when we treat art not as an aesthetic object, but as a mirror. A ritual. A message.
Why This Is More Than Art
My art isn’t about perfection.
It’s about energy, intention, and reflection.
That means:
- Every gemstone, herb, and essential oil is chosen for its energetic signature, not just its appearance.
- Every wrapping technique—how I bind, knot, layer, or shape—is a way to hold intention in physical form.
- Color is more than pretty—it’s chosen to speak a virtue, expose a truth, or anchor a need.
- The dolls themselves are a living language. They come to me with names. Sometimes they tell me what they’re for after I’d planned them out, so I have to adjust, redo.
- The drawings, paintings, and photographs are less about technique and more about truth. If they feel unsettling, it’s usually because they’re working.
Even if you don’t “like” a piece, it may still have a message for you. Some pieces resist interpretation until you’re ready. Others speak instantly to the part of you you’ve been trying to avoid. You don’t have to be trained in art or psychology to receive what’s being offered—you just have to be curious.
Art doesn’t have to be fine art to be valuable.
It doesn’t even have to be good.
It just has to be honest—and you have to be willing to meet it halfway.
The Symbolism That Emerges
The symbols in my work don’t come from a master plan.
They emerge.
Sometimes through color. Sometimes through shape or repetition. And sometimes through a feeling that insists: This means something, even if you can’t explain it yet.
I don’t try to invent meaning.
I sense it—in the textures that call for contrast, in the name that arrives before the doll is done, in the moonstone that refuses to be placed anywhere but the heart.
Symbolism isn’t always deliberate. But it’s rarely accidental.
It shows up when something wants to be known.
That’s the work: not to force a message, but to give it form.
To wrap the energy until it takes shape. To notice when something familiar appears in a new configuration. To feel when an element doesn’t just belong—it speaks.
And when it does, the piece becomes more than visual.
It becomes a reflection. A signpost. A moment of recognition.
A sense of peace—because it’s no longer a mystery. It’s the answer.
A Few Pieces That Show You What I Mean
🪶 Silma – Created to help hold sacred anger. This isn’t a gentle doll. She’s structured to support rage that needs acknowledgment—not soothing. Her presence is a statement: I am allowed to feel this.
🦋 Butterfly – Created for someone living with PTSD, Butterfly gently pulls at the decades of fault and shame unfairly thrust upon my patron. She loosens her throat, making space for truth to rise. Her wrapping holds the quiet encouragement to remember safely—and to finally break free from a story she didn’t cause, didn’t choose, and never deserved.
🍴 Hannah the Kitchen Witch – She came through with a wand in her hand and protection in her wrappings. Her role is to keep the hearth warm and the boundaries clear. A domestic force of will wearing fishnets and boots.
🎨 Under the Vest – A mixed-media painting built around a single moment: an officer bleeding out on the street. She may not make it home. And if she doesn’t, the things she didn’t say will die with her. This piece holds the tension between grief and the will to live—and leaves you standing there with her.
What You’ll Find in This Category
More Than Art is the foundation for everything that asks you to feel before you explain.
Inside this category, you’ll find:
- Materials with Meaning – Why I choose the elements I do, and what they carry energetically and symbolically.
- Owning an Original – The power of handmade work and what it offers that mass-produced objects never can.
- The Story Behind the Work – Intimate details about how pieces come to be, including narrative and intuitive decisions that shape them.
- Portfolio Highlights – Featured dolls, drawings, and other works that exemplify symbolic creation and psychological resonance.
If you’re someone who stares at a painting and feels something shift…
If you believe objects can hold meaning that goes beyond their materials…
If you’ve ever felt “seen” by something you couldn’t explain—
Then you’re exactly where you belong.
Keep Looking. You’ll Find What You Weren’t Expecting.
The portfolio is a collection of thresholds—each piece a doorway into something deeper.
Some thresholds are quiet. Others demand your attention. But all of them offer a chance to step closer to the truth. Not every piece will be for you. And that’s the point. The ones that make you uncomfortable, the ones you want to scroll past—those might be holding the exact reflection you need.
Pick a piece. Read its story.
Let it show you something you didn’t know you were ready to see.
Join the Shadow Seekers’ Dispatch so you don’t miss a thing.