Marilyn intends that "the art reflect the dreams, commitment, and nurturing environment necessary to make the aspirations of our community a reality- a daily reminder that life can be respectful, beautiful, and connected to the larger world. Affirming that art can play a role in building a loving, creative, humane world."
Artist Statement
Renewing and creating through learning ancestral visual languages is at the core of my work. Through painting, I strive to connect to my ancestors, to a Lifeway (pre-christian, European) that has been buried, cast off, lost and forgotten in the often forced immigration to the New World. Such Lifeways are powerful, humane, spiritual, and multi-dimensional as are all Original Peoples’ Lifeways.
I make paintings to absorb and share the images, symbols and legends of that ancient time, that I may continue to live with and create from them today. It has become an essential practice to “know thyself”, in order to create. I have learned from the Original People (Indigenous/Native) friends that knowing oneself is knowing one’s Ancestral People and their Lifeway.
My journey—a number of years ago—to Northern Europe was made possible by a research fellowship. This hands-on study has given me an authentic beginning, a familiarity with the knowledge, images, philosophy, mythology and iconography of my ancestors’ visual language.
“We are [ ] just beginning to understand our long alienation from our authentic European heritage which was a harmonic, gylanic, non-violent, earth centered culture.”*
Cultivating my creative practice through ancestral Lifeways is at the heart of my Goddess (spirit) series; a pathway of living, dreaming and making, in complicated, contemporary times.
*Marija Gimbutas was professor of European archeology at UCLA and wrote more than twenty books, including The Civilization of the Goddess.