I was the baby of my family, the youngest of three children, born in Berkeley (1928). We moved to Glendale when I was six and at nine my father died. He had been the administrator for the S.E.R.A. (the state emergency relief program) in Los Angeles County. He was essentially a social worker, helping people. He died of stomach ulcers. About a month after my father died, I got a disease in my left hip. I don't know what it was--rheumatic fever or polio or something else-- but I  was in a cast for almost nine months.  It seems as if it had something to do with my father's death. There was no grief counsel-ing at that time and the psycho-logical wound from this loss has been of major importance in my life, and consequently in my spiritual journey. I read an interesting line from C. S. Lewis, whose mother died when he was nine, to the effect that he never could seem to recover. I think that is true. You keep trying but you never quite recover from the premature death of a parent. There is a great sense of loss. After my father died, I became quite introverted. We moved to my grandmother's home in Pebble Beach near Pacific Grove. I attended Pacific Grove grammar school and Carmel high school. 
      At sixteen I was a teaching assistant in my high school marine biology class. The following year at Cal-Berkeley I worked in the embryology department. When I flunked the prerequisite chemistry exam, the door to a career in marine biology was closed, so I switched to undergraduate philosophy. That year I met Peter. He was preparing to enter the seminary to become an Episcopal priest. Through his influence I was baptized at eighteen. I spent a wonderful summer at International House picking up units for an AA degree and then transferred to Goucher Women's College in Baltimore, where we could be near each other. I majored in religion and philosophy. At this time I wondered if I was called to the convent or to marriage. We were married at St. Clement's in Berkeley, June  5, 1948 just after I turned twenty. Peter was ordained in 1949. 
     Following Peter's graduation, we were missionaries in Marin County for seven years, planting the mission of Saint Francis of Assisi in Novato. I spent one exciting semester majoring in Fine Arts at Dominican College before our first child was born. After seven years in Novato we went to the Republic of Panama to serve as  missionaries. We had four children --ages eight months, two years, four years, and six years. I was homesick, overwhelmed and horrified by the poverty. Not exactly fit for life as a missionary, I needed silence and rest. 
     After three years in Panama (1956-59) we spent almost thirty-five years on the Monterey Peninsula. My fifth child Jonnie was born just after we returned to the United States. During the drug era of the sixties and seventies we were rearing four teenagers. I didn't have a clue how to manage them. I was horrified by the drug scene. I was drinking lots of white wine to help me cope. Later I realized my dependence on alcohol was a problem. I went into therapy for alcoholism and  joined AA. I went to meetings five days a week and am thankful for that. It was very hard for me to be verbal at that time. AA got me talking. 

 
In addition to AA, I did a lot of journaling, attended Jungian seminars, a leadership conference and many retreats. My spiritual journey has been varied. I spent some time at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. In March 1977, I went to an art seminar called "Art as Prompter of the Spirit," led by our dear friend Virginia Davis, a Quaker and Jonnie's godmother. I studied the records of Jesus in a seventeen-day residential seminar at the Guild for Psychological Studies at Four Springs in Middletown, Lake County. A number of Roman Catholic priests were among those in our group. We read and studied the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and then talked about how our own lives connected with what they were saying. One part of our program was to paint or draw our own experiences and then share our creations with one another. In working on the topic of a childhood wound, I recall that my painting came out as a startling burst of blood red. I had to borrow more red paint from someone to finish it. I believe that went back to my father's death. This very powerful emotional approach led me to do more art. 
     Peter and I had friends who were monks and nuns and we regularly went on retreats. When the children were young, we took turns caring for the kids. For nine months,on Peter's last sabbatical, we were students at Pendle Hill--a Quaker center for study and contemplation in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. Forty-seven years ago I became a lay associate of the Order of the Transfiguration (an Anglican order of nuns) and of the Holy Cross (an Anglican order of monks). These associations foster  a closer connection with the monks and nuns through correspondence, prayer, visits, and retreats. 
 

The Benedicite from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer of 1928 is an Old Testament song of creation from the third chapter of the Book of Daniel. It was shouted out by three young Jewish boys--Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego--from the midst of a fire into which King Nebuchadnezzar had thrown them. When they did not burn, but rather sang this magnificent canticle from inside the flames, the king was moved to accept the sovereignty of their god. The beauty and strength of each of the symbols mentioned in the Benedicite speak in a very powerful way. In the summer of 1975, I decided to make a silk-screen series based upon them, to say in form and color the simplicity and essence of each. To do this I needed to study ancient manuscript illuminations to discover how these symbols had been depicted historically. I also needed to think, to look and to be silent. I stopped my own teaching in order to take lessons in box-making to protect and house the graphics. Then I decided to print the canticle using hand-set type rather than calligraphy. This required studying how to set the Americana font. I wanted the response "Praise him and magnify him for ever" (Benedicite omnia opera Domini) to repeat somewhat statically. It was my joy to study privately for two months with both Lois Stopple (bookbinder and artist from Sonoma County) and Jim Kohnke (director of the Guild of Book Arts). The graphics are done using the hand-cut lacquer film method on Swarthmore print paper, cut square to contain the idea of four-cornered earth and heaven. The whole project was a shout and a song for me.

 
About ten years ago I was hospitalized with a herniated disk. The pain was incredible; it affected my sciatic nerve and was also affecting my heart. I was in ICU for eleven days. At one point the surgeon asked me to stand. The pain was overwhelming. I didn't know if I was going to live or die. That was when I came to totally trust God with my life. I had never done that before. This experience of letting go filled me with a profound peace. 
     Interestingly, my great-grandfather was a law partner of Robert Ingersoll, a very famous American atheist. My spiritual roots may have come through my grandmother and mother, who had a tremendous love of nature  which I also share. My religion is very simple. My way of accessing spirit is in daily living, and doing simple things, like walking. I have always walked and hiked. I prefer to be alone when I walk so I can spend that time in silence. I like to refer to God as our Creator or O Great Spirit--terms that mean more to me than "father." 

 
In Carmel I had studied a book by Fred Eager on Italic handwriting and was asked to teach--first some mothers in a parent's group and then students at All Saints Episcopal Day School. The Reverend Jack Carter, executive secretary for the National Episcopal Schools, put me in charge of handwriting for all the Episcopal schools (more than a thousand) and sent me to study with Lloyd Reynolds, a renowned teacher at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. I stayed with Lloyd and his wife for an entire weekend--which seemed like a lifetime. Lloyd's energy was quite incredible and he poured himself out, talking to me the whole time I was there. He ended by appointing me to the Board of the Italic Handwriting Society of North America and made me one of the competition judges. 
     I visited and stayed with Lloyd several times over the years but never took formal training with him. However, I did take a week-long course in calligraphy with Sister Loyola Mary at Maryhurst College. I did a great deal of commission calligraphic work on the Monterey Peninsula, and taught in the adult education division in three school districts. I wrote and published an Italic handwriting textbook to help my students in 1973. I also was asked to teach handwriting to the headmasters of about twenty Episcopal schools at a conference in San Antonio, Texas, and wrote an article about handwriting for the Living Church, the national news-organ of the Episcopal Church. 
       I wanted my students to learn how to write in a beautiful way  and to have a sense of beauty about themselves. I gave them an assignment to write out a response to "Who Am I?" It wasn't until a student asked me if I had done this exercise myself that I understood the need for equality between student and teacher. I had overlooked this, so I decided to write out who I was. This was in 1978. 

 
I started with a list of important symbols: eyes--the light of the spirit shines through the eyes; hands--that touch and feel and express so much; ocean; the moon; a crucifix--with opening arms that reveal the center, the vulnerable heart place; the Carmelite Monastery--south of the town of Carmel; a place that has been important to me since I was young; and the home in which we live. My most important word was compassion--meaning with passion (literally, "to suffer with"). 
     In 1975 I was one of six faculty who formed the Guild of the Book Arts. We taught a group of eighteen students a variety of book arts including platen press printing, bookbinding, illumination, calligraphy, papermaking, paper marbling, silk-screening, and book repair. We met every day for six weeks. The class was accredited through the San Jose State extension program. All the students went on to work in various bookmaking, publishing and related professions. 
     Teaching is vitally important in order to stay connected with people, but it means a great tension. Creating art and teaching require a lot of energy. It is very hard to do both at once. I came to a rather dramatic stop in my teaching when my therapist thought it was necessary for me to become more rooted as a person and to accept myself. At that time I did some deep introverted work and began my Benedicite series of silkscreens. 

 
It may be that the loss of my father and my inability to speak easily has something to do with my path as an artist. Art has been a healing path and has also helped me  communicate my deep caring for people. In 1979, when  asked to speak to Friends of Harrison Memorial Library in Carmel, I said, "In speaking about creativity and what causes people to go into art, for me art is an absolute necessity--the need to understand oneself, and then pay attention to that self." I am an introvert, which means that I need silence and I need to be alone. I struggle with verbal expression, yet I need desperately to communicate. Thus color, form, writing, music and dance must become my means if words  are  not. The  necessity  of  art   has to do with loving--with understanding our intimate union with God. It has to do with the gap in human-spiritual relationships, and our tremendous need for loving intimacy, or union/communion. Feeling people need focus or they will shatter. Art for me is bringing order out of chaos--a constant changing of color and form until it is just right. That rightness is a feeling, an intuition. 
     For me, painting is prayer. Besides making art, part of creative expression is the importance of sharing it. This may be with a husband, a child or a beloved friend, or it may be through an exhibition. Our work must be seen because it is our speech. It is the point of connection with others. 

     Where does the inspiration for my art come from? Nature is of primary importance.
There I see the art of our creator--the beauty of clouds, trees and ocean. I love repeated forms. I found a fern on a hiking trail that was the exact color and form of seaweed I had seen in a tide pool. People inspire me--they are God's great works of art. Another source of inspiration  is books. I spent two years in research for my silkscreen of the Phoenix. Music and sound are other sources. I appreciate the order that comes out of chaos in the music of Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Mozart. 
     One of the students at Pendle Hill led an afternoon session by asking our class to go outside--to stand in absolute silence and to listen to every sound we could hear--and to pretend that we were scoring a symphony. A train going by went into the bass clef; the birds singing were the soprano line, the melody, the snow falling, the leaves crunching under foot--every sound combined into a perfectly beautiful symphony. Through my life, I have always sought quiet. My husband and I are very quiet in our living--we read, write, cook, walk and enjoy the peace of the wonderful silence. 
     It is important for me to live and to make things as simple as possible. I want my art to be simple and universal. That means that I often do not put faces on figures. My recent paintings based on photos I took of totem figures in Alaska show my fascination with color and form. I am working with bits and pieces of these images, mostly only changing the colors. The cover image is part of a raven totem. I did change this piece quite a bit from the original. The eye has to do with the inner being--the light of the soul. 
     None of my work is on the walls in our home. When I finish a piece, I don't need it anymore. It was wonderful to make, but when I am finished I need to go ahead to the next piece--constantly going forward. My art draws me more deeply into the spiritual. When I look back, I may see that it was far ahead of my spiritual understanding at the time. Sometimes other people see things that I don't--things that I need to think about. That is exciting.