For years, artistic expression was relatively inaccessible to me because I tried to get to it through my structured thinking mind of ideas. I had never thought to come to canvas or paper with no idea in mind, and to allow myself to simply begin to make marks and let flow that which would come on its own.

The pressed flower series (which emerged from the subconscious and showed itself further as I engaged with it) and the preschool years experiment (which showed me the way to unselfconscious expression without a product as goal) have opened something quite new for me. Now I am finding that I feel compelled to create something, and it begins to scream from within to come out. I know the starting point, but that is all. I make space for it, and what emerges is often works that are imbued with emotional content, aesthetic complexity, and most excitingly, rich meaning.

There within the art piece, I suddenly realize what my inner self was speaking through it. Whether it be a photography project of the Wild Woman trapped in a reflection of a domestic scene, or a higher abstraction in a painting of colours one against the other, I am left with statements that often knock me right back on my heels. I stare at them and see the layers of meaning within, metaphor upon metaphor, and then a most amazing thing happens: the metaphors layer on top of each other, and a new insight emerges.

I feel like a person who has discovered a whole new world, and a bit like a slow learner to be discovering this process in my 40s. The depth in abstract art has been hard for me to appreciate up until now. All this may have become available to me sooner with art studies. But here I am, when I am, with it flowering organically forth, experiential, spiritual, an earthy human exploration generated from within. Very much my style.

And I am thrilled with Deviantart for providing a perfect forum in which I can document the discovery for myself.