The artist comments on her paintings —

Angel
"After the art show was up and ready, I felt as if I had been really protected. It all went with such love and harmony that I saw myself as a little girl sitting in the hand of the Holy Spirit! (I wish now I had made a better hand, but, well... whatever.)"

The Bigger Picture
"I was thinking about myself and people my age. We could be looking back, and either thinking we'd done a good job, or we don't like what we remember. Or we could be looking forward to our funeral. Why wouldn't it be better to be looking up and connecting with our soul star and spiritual values, so that it's more cheerful? I'll tell you that my mother lived to be ninety-seven. Her bones were breaking but she was very bright. I went to see her one day and she said, 'Don't you think I'm pathetic? I'm dying!' I said, 'Of course you're dying! It's your time to die. But in forty-seven days, as soon as you die, you're going to be back. You'll be somebody else. So who do you want to be?' She said, 'Well, I'm going to be a little boy.' I said, 'That's good. Where are you going to live?' 'Denmark.' 'What will your name be?' 'Peter.' I said, 'What sort of a family will you have?' She said, 'We're going to be very well fixed!' We had a lot of fun the last few months of her life, because we were planning about him, rather than thinking about here."

Bon Appetit
"I came in touch with the fact that I use food to push down uncomfortable feelings. By stopping to feel the feelings, rather than eat, I got in touch with a lot of little girl fear stemming from arguments with my mother."

Bottom Feeders
"That woman is trying to go on a vacation. She's on a rubber raft, but a lot of little orange umbilical cords are connected to the raft. I'll wake up in the morning and have all kinds of guilt. 'Maybe I should have been nicer to somebody or another in high school.' I don't know. 'Maybe my children should be doing something different.' All those nagging thoughts bother me. So I thought, 'I'm just going to make a picture of them, and they're all going to have to keep away from me!' Actually, now when I wake up and have that kind of gloomy feeling, I just remember the picture and think, 'Hey! I already handled that!'"

Buyer's Remorse
"This woman is going to the altar, accompanied by her father. But she's wondering about the other men who used to be so crazy about her. Is this really where she ought to be going? But you can put in your own interpretations. That's just fine."

Chakra Monsters
"A lot of people are aware of chakras, little centers in your body that give you energy. So these chakras all have monsters in them. This picture is about self-help, self-improvement. The person is getting rid of all the demons in their chakras."

Core Belief Anxiety
"I was reading a book called The Disappearance of the Universe, which is filled with unusual ideas, one of those books that tells about nineteen realities going on at the same time. If we can just learn, we can step into another one. Space is not space; it's really something else. And all of a sudden I just felt so disoriented, it was like there was a hurricane going through my mind. And I thought, people are going to hate this painting. But instead, people said, 'Oh, I know how that feels!' So apparently I'm not the only one with inner hurricanes."

Corporate America
"This is a little political scene of a CEO or somebody who owns everything. Black is the oil, and grey is the Internet. That is the world that he's standing on, and everybody is completely dominated by him. He's an American, of course."

Escape
"I'm sitting at a party, and I'm looking around at everybody and thinking, 'Oh God, they're all so stuck!' And then I thought, 'You know something? I'm really stuck!' So I went home and painted that picture, and I've felt much better ever since."

Every Woman's Hidden Fear
"I don't know about you, but this has always been my basic nightmare, turning into a bag lady. So I decided to paint it. People then said to me, 'But she's in pretty good shape.' She's not going to be in good shape for long; she's homeless."

Faces
"This is just a picture I made one day. It didn't have any meaning to it. So I put little people falling through the sky. I'm pretending that extraterrestrials are landing here."

Family Circus
"The orange cat is my mother. She is going to have a Manhattan. She's not very securely placed on the ground. My sister is attempting to keep it together, but since she's in a mouse cage, she doesn't have much success. I hover over my mother like a bird, and if she moves quickly, she'll be stabbed in the back by my cage. Welcome to the cocktail hour."

Family Portrait
"This is a picture of our family. I used to love standing on my father's shoes. I'd hold onto him and close my eyes. And he'd walk around the house and make me guess where we were. So that's me in the red dress. Now the person in front of me is my sister. For some reason she hated our family. For years she would say, 'This is my dream. You and Mother and Dad are killed in a train crash, and I become the Queen of England.' Lying in the background is my grandfather, Puppy. He lived with us, along with my father's mother. And up in the corner is my mother, who has to cook for Puppy, who likes gourmet food, my grandmother, who's diabetic, my sister, who is overweight, me, who has a thyroid problem and is very thin, and my father, who has the gout. Later I asked my mother, 'How did you handle all those diets?' and she said, 'Gin.'"

Fantasy Love Affair
"I was thinking about somebody one day. That was an enjoyable afternoon. But enough about him."

Further Disagreements with Mother
"A therapist suggested I fantasize that my mother was going to hold me tenderly. To my amazement, she ripped open my dress, grabbed my heart and said, 'I'm sorry, honey, but I'm really hungry!' I planned to destroy this picture, but a neighbor saw it and loved it, saying, 'Oh, my god! That's my mother!' His remark made me feel much better."

Go With The Flow
"As holidays approach I am filled with anxiety, guilt, inadequacy, etc. So I painted this picture to help myself to float calmly past each celebration without all the attendant neurosis. At the top, there's Christmas and death, then an occasional pet, the clock, meaning time marches on, birthdays, New Year's, Fourth of July, and finally Easter."

Head Popping Through
"My son Nick is a musician, and he and I have a lot of thoughts in common. And one time we were talking - I don't remember if this was my idea or his idea. But I was thinking that everybody's walking around underwater. People don't get it. Once in a while somebody gets an 'Ah ha!,' like a head popping through. So he named his rock band Head Popping Through. So in the painting you can see people think this underwater scene is what the world is. But the central person has discovered it's really very different."

Inner Critics
"I'm always reading that there isn't anybody in the world but you. Everybody has just made up their own life. Most of us have made up so many critics! Sitting in the middle of this picture is the person, surrounded by all the critics. The idea here is about forgiveness. So you can see the light going up and connecting to the star, which means you realize that you're making everybody up. And there's nothing in the world but forgiveness. Might as well do that all the time. Then you can get out of that feeling of isolation and self-criticism."

Letting Go
"Getting ready for my art show, I had a vision of all these people climbing up my back. As they fell off they became tiny, like little ants. So I was going to make the painting that way, but I started with her head too big and in the wrong place, so I had to work with it. And naturally we have the ugly Americans in the cruise ship on the horizon."

Love Lifted Me
"I was very tired one day, and I thought, 'I'm just going to be hanging on the wall.' But as I did the painting, I began to draw some water, and then I made some other water. When I decided to put in the hook I thought about that old hymn, Love Lifted Me. And I felt better."

The Magic Telephone
"One day in meditation I saw myself trudging through a huge desert with no hope in sight. Just a desert, as far as you could see in every direction. And so I thought, 'This isn't very good.' I kept on walking, when all of a sudden way in the distance I could see a green oasis. So I went to the oasis, found the beautiful trees, found a little pool, sat down on a little bench. And a wisdom figure came toward me and said, 'How are you doing?' I said, 'Well, I'm tired of my journey. It just seems so dry!' And he said, 'Well, you have to keep on your journey. But I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you a magic telephone. And when you get tired, just give me a call, and I'll put a little oasis right in front of you!'"

Meadow Prayer
"This is a theme of going in to find loving comfort, in this case in a meadow."

Meditation #1
"There we have a cruise ship again. It appears whenever I put in any water. This is about the advice, you know, 'Meditate, go in, find the treasure.' You go down to the bottom of yourself, past all the scary things, and you will eventually find a beautiful gift."

Meditation #2
"This is my idea of meditation. You clear out all those weird things that are going around in your head. Meditation is that big hose that comes in and just cleans it all out."

Mother Earth, Pollution and Civilization
"Who are these people? The orange is the center of the earth, the green is Mother Earth, the black is pollution that is covering her. This was right after the tsunami. As you can see, there's a Princess Line Cruise ship up on the surface. And if these reptilian people start fighting, the cruise ship will be demolished, because the forces will be huge. The people on the cruise ship are from our world, the Western world, eating too much, drinking too much and putting our garbage all over the world."

Mysterious Child
"As a child, I got along in my family by being a jester or a funny person. But at the same time, I didn't really have very much control. You can see my hands are tied. My mother was pretty stern, and my sister was afraid of her. But I made my mother's life miserable, doing little passive-aggressive things."

My Unconscious Is Better Than Yours
"I went to a two-week workshop where we were taught to paint like children. The teacher said, 'You want to just paint on paper, with inexpensive paint. Don't worry about making a mistake. Look at the colors. Ask yourself, What do you feel like? Pretty soon images will just begin coming to you. You won't be getting a good idea. It isn't going to be coming from your head. You want it to come from your heart. Just allow it to come out and don't be critical.' So I made this painting. And she came by, and I said, 'You know, everything I make looks like a fucking greeting card!' And she said, 'Sally, never mind. Tell yourself the world wants greeting cards. Give yourself permission to do whatever it is you want to do.'"

New Energy
"We got very involved in the Harmonic Convergence and the Astrological Convergence. I don't remember all the names of things. But this is supposed to be representing a wonderful new energy shift that took place last year. So that baby is boosting everybody into the fourth dimension. Or something."

No-Go Geisha
"This is a day I wasn't feeling very good. I'm pretty placating. If you have a problem or a story, I'm going to give you all my attention. This is the 'No-Go Geisha.' She says, 'I don't care about your story.'"

Pet Peeve
A girl said to me, 'I have a beautiful cat, and my boyfriend's allergic to him. I'm don't know what I'm going to do.' She was all upset. I said, 'I'll try taking your cat, but it has to be able to get along with my little orange cat.' So she brought the cat, which was beautiful, but it was huge and very unfriendly. So I thought, 'I have got to get rid of this cat!' I said to the Holy Spirit, 'Do something so that I won't have to go back on my word. I need a good excuse to get rid of this cat.' Well, the next morning the cat started throwing up hairballs. Everywhere. A perfect signal. I told the girl, 'Sweetheart, I love your cat, but it's throwing up hairballs. You have to take it away.' And she did. In the picture you can see how the cat completely dominated me for the two days he lived in my house."

Primal Scream
"When I was born I was a blue baby with an umbilical cord around my throat. My mother was dying. She was hemorrhaging, and there was a big hubbub around her. This was 1921. The nurses were so preoccupied with my mother that they were not paying much attention to me. Finally they figured out I was alive, but I got pneumonia and was put in an incubator and kept in the hospital. So my early bonding was negligible. One day in meditation I felt all these very bad feelings about being a baby. In the picture I made the baby with three left arms, because she was trying desperately to hang onto something. And I'm trying to take the umbilical cord and plug it into somebody, so I'll be taken care of."

The Raft
To see full description, click here.

Rebirth
"In another meditation I was just sitting there when all of a sudden I felt a hand with a boxing glove, punching, and all kinds of broken glass or something. I tried to withdraw a little from the experience, and I realized that I had just poked my way out of this egg. So it felt like some kind of a rebirth. It felt really good."

Shamanic Landscape
"In our meditation group, every month we do shamanic journeys. There's an upper world, a middle world, and a lower world. On one of my journeys, I said, 'I want to find out what I should do about Dino.' I got on the back of a big mountain lion, and we rode all around the underworld and finally came to an opening with big pink flamingoes flying by. I looked down from this cave, and I was as far above the earth as if I were in an airplane. A bird that happened to be flying by looked at me and said, 'This is how far you need to stay away from Dino!' These are the kinds of messages you get in shamanic journeys."

She's Leaving Home
"There was a Beatles song, She's Leaving Home, which reminded me of myself. I came home from Europe. I was thirty-one years old. I said to my parents, 'I think maybe I should get married,' and they said, 'Oh, baby! You're too young!' Then, when I was going to have a baby at age thirty-three, I said to the doctor, 'I suppose  you think I'm too young to have a baby.' He said, 'What! You're almost too old!' So this is a picture of a person with her parents hanging on."

Showtime
"I just wanted to make some pretty colors and stuff, but when I got through, the painting reminded me of a person looking through the curtains to see if the audience was there."

Single Mother With PMS
"I didn't know what to paint. I wanted to slap the paint around and around. So I did, and the painting just turned out like that. I call this, 'Single Mother with PMS.' She looks really unhappy and angry, though I painted it long after I had PMS and I wasn't a single mother anymore."

Some Enchanted Evening
"I got that magnificent hat at a rummage sale, so I decided to put it in one of my paintings. You think this woman is so cool, but she's an absolute baby looking to be taken care of. Of course this is autobiographical."

Soul Mates?
"I thought I'd be plugging into somebody in a relationship, but I realized that a lot of the men I've gone around with have been plugging into me. It surprised me very much that the picture turned out that way. I thought it was going to be the other way around. There's a socket on my leg, and he's got an electrical cord for an umbilical cord. And he thinks I'm going to save him. I've had quite a few boyfriends like that. 'Sorry.'"

Tai Chi
"I'm going to a fantastic tai chi class, and I love it. The person in gray is me. The other little graceful people are the other students. I take every opportunity I can to sit down in my chair. 'Come on, get up,' they'll say. 'We're doing one more thing.' "

That Dish of Worms
"I had a friend who said to me, 'What is all this going in? All these classes you're taking and art therapy?' And I said, 'Well, you just want to understand about yourself. You go in and think about your childhood.' She goes, 'I'm not touching that dish of worms!'"

The Winner
"I was so excited and relieved when my show had been delivered to the gallery and hung. It looked great, and it completed five years of work, and I felt like a high school runner winning a race. Pretty good self-image for someone eighty-four, don't you think?"

Welcome Home
"I've been working on that inner child, and I wanted to make one more picture of that woman with the red hat. [See book cover.] I thought, 'I'm going to make her dancing.' But I was very surprised. She's taken that little child - I wanted someone else to take care of her - but she's going to take care of the baby herself."

Women's Group
"I was looking through the Kamasutra, and enjoying all the beautiful illustrations, and I decided to try to make a painting in that particular style. When it was finished, I realized it was really a picture of my women's meditation group."

You Can Have It All
"I was thinking about people wanting all this beautiful china and silver and big houses. But nobody has a maid. So basically, the picture shows all the same person. Down below, she's getting everything ready. And up above, she's about to have a party. So this is my idea of the rich American woman. She's got her knee on the world, because she's taking up all the resources and dominating everybody. Kind of a little weird statement."