Mother of God

One wonders why one would risk their life to liberate a belief that is not theirs? The truth is, I do not know. But I do know this — the strength of gravitational pull that made me arrive in these moments is the guiding force behind this work. It was much stronger than myself and through its presence, I knew I was protected.

What this series symbolizes to me has much evolved since the days of its conception. Yet what has remained constant is this: the Mother of God was never a peripheral figure. She was the origin. She was the earth before it was named, the darkness before light was called good, the body before the body was called sinful. Before word and world were held apart, she was already present. Every culture that has ever existed has known her — under different names, in different forms, but always present, always central. It was not time that erased her. It was fear. The fear of what could not be controlled, owned, or contained. And so she was edited out, slowly, quietly, until we forgot she had ever been there at all.

Women were once celebrated as an embodiment of the Great Mother, it was a time when the feminine was held in relation to the earth, when life and form were understood as inseparable. Through the ages, systems of belief and structure reshaped that perception, layering scripture over presence until presence itself became difficult to see.

Transformation is a heartbreak. It is a dissolution of the old to fertilize the new. As an artist I move within this terrain, this threshold, where dark and light, death and rebirth move as one continuous motion. What returns does not arrive for the first time. It has remained within form itself, waiting for recognition rather than invention. The Mother of God was always here. We are remembering how to see.

to understand religion 
is to understand reality

to learn

each lesson and its value
each tradition 
             and its harm

to know each flaw
in the words 
of dead 
men

to realize the difference 
between what is sold as spirit
and that which is 
               the centered soul

to see the separation 
      that lies in the gap between following                and                freedom
                                        the truth 
that is in the distance between
church                    and                  god

          to illuminate 
that teachings are only beneficial
         if they lead to willing transformation