About the painting, Pueblo Beyond Time/ 24 x 36

I began painting Pueblo Beyond Time just a few days after loosing my partner of 20 years, Thomas Paul Augustine. I didn't feel that I could paint, but said to myself that I had to get back to the easel and find out what might happen. The easel has always been a place of familiarity, comfort and sanctuary. To my astonishment, once I had picked up the brush, I felt a new and acutely intense force traveling through me, right from the very core of my body, down along my arm and onto the canvas. The sensation was strong and moving, almost an out-of-body experience. I believe this is what art-making should always be - a direct communication of the emotion of the artist out into the world. Perhaps you'll see the result in the painting, which I find haunting unlike any other. Unconsciously, I left one doorway darkened and I find it powerfully affecting.

Quote / Client response to the painting, Pueblo Beyond Time:

"I must say how much I love your painting. It is so very, very powerful. To read what you wrote about how it came to be makes the experience of seeing it even more powerful. For me, it is absolutely overflowing with emotion - with several emotions.  It is so filled with awe and with life, with the past, present and future, with movement -   perhaps with blood - either as a life force, or as a symbol of the loss of it, flowing out of the body.... And the black door - Oh my god - it is so powerful I can hardly bear to look at it. We know what you are going through. And so I can identify with the black door. Oh, how I can I identify... That's why it touches me so very, very deeply. The piece so resonates with me, so speaks to me, and yet at the same time, when I see the black door, it is painful. IT IS AN EXTRAORDINARY PIECE, Jada."
Merle Strauss, musician, poet, dancer, healer.