Floating in water is where my body feels suspended, almost weightless, and the effort of moving is so balanced and graceful as to seem effortless. That’s the feeling I try to keep with me when I’m moving through the world, and it’s the feeling I want my work to have – conscious of pain but transcending it.

My art is literally created by water, and imbued with its dynamics of movement, fluidity and flow.

Blue water, 14 x 18.5 in., oil paints and bronze powders on Fabriano paper, 1993
More about my **Floating colors** process

Back from above [detail], 12.25 × 10 in., oils, bronze powder, charcoal, pastel and oil crayon on Linorg paper, 2003

Art looks beneath the surface of life, and for me the place to look has always been the body.

When disability made it hard for me to be out moving through the world, I made my body the focus of my work, exploring the connections between pain, consciousness, and creativity. I draw myself from the inside out, tuning in to sensory and kinesthetic perceptions and finding beauty in a curving spine.

More about my Visible skeleton series

Palegold hands, 10.5 x 13.5 in., oils, bronze powder, charcoal, pastel and oil crayon on Moulin de Fleurac, 1999

Bluegrey stretching/kneeling figure, 9.75 x 12.5 in., oils, bronze powder, charcoal, pastel and oil crayon on Bergerac, 2000

Asymmetry at my core brings the need for a subtle effort of balancing, which keeps me engaged with the workings of my bones and muscles and nerves and senses. In anatomical terms, this is the realm of proprioception, the network of signals and self-sensors through which the body maintains its relationships with space, time, gravity, and all that is other.

Double hands, clasping (brown-pink) [detail], 10.5 x 8.75 in., Twinrocker Yale, 2017

Thoracic spinal nerves study, 6 x 7 in., Twinrocker Rotunda, 2020

Spinal cord (cauda equina) with nerve roots [detail], 6.5 x 8.5 in., charcoal on Twinrocker Rotunda, 2011

Drawing connects me to the ongoing work of balancing – to the consciousness, and even the creativity, of the body itself. I ground my work in the real, drawing from the skeleton and cadaver dissections in the anatomy lab. But this is not medical illustration. My goal is to evoke the texture of real flesh and bone: a sensual take on anatomy, a reclaiming of the inner landscape.

More about Drawing anatomy

Emerging nerves (yellow+red), 7.25 x 9.75 in., Twinrocker, 2025

In my latest work, I’ve been venturing ever deeper into inner space.

The locus of pain – the place where my spinal cord and emerging spinal nerves are most constricted – is where the story of my body’s creativity most visibly plays out.

More about my latest work and how it connects me to the creative body

Cord closeup at L2-3 (red crystalline), 11 x 11 in. on Twinrocker Rotunda, 2025

It has been a revelation to understand the three-dimensional rotational deformity of scoliosis as the product of a dynamic process … a process that’s always ongoing, as time causes the balance achieved to shift and change.

My vertebrae are engaged in a complex process of remodeling – and my process of drawing is its creative counterpart.

Spinal nerve landscape (#1) [detail], 11 x 7.75 in., Twinrocker, 2016

Spinal cord butterfly with floating colors (red crystalline), 11 x 15 in., 2017

Spinal cord cross-section (blue cell), 8 x 10.25 in. on Moulin de Fleurac, 2025

My nerve landscapes are becoming looser – still tied to anatomical reality, but less defined, with a different balance of real and imagined and a different relationship to the floating colors.

Nerve landscapes

Arbor vitae of the cerebellum (mauve crystalline) [detail], 11 x 6.75 in., Twinrocker Yale, 2018

Nerve landscape (indigo + light), 8.75 x 11.5 in., Twinrocker Yale, 2025

More about the drawings: media, paper, etc.

Overview of all the artwork