Liminality (from the Latin ‘limes’) thought of as limit or frontier, is when one is not in one place (which can be physical or mental), or in another. It is being on a threshold, between a thing that has gone and another that is about to arrive. 

I am an Indigenous woman with mixed Mexican, Mescalero Apache, and European ancestry. I describe myself as a liminal creature existing in-between my multicultural identity. All of my paintings, together with the secret language are all clues to my existence.

The question I am most frequently asked about my work is why I texture “the secret language” in to my canvas.  The texturing or “secret language” is my artist story and process. The concept of a “secret language” springs from my Mama, who discovered “a story-telling tree” standing in an overgrown garden with carvings made from “ancestors from another time.”

When Mama showed me her Sycamore tree, I saw that the “secret language” of symbols, animals, and birds were the designs of little worms and wood beetles traced behind the bark of the tree. Being in the presence of grace gave me the idea to cover my canvas in molding paste and then carve wee-little blessings, messages, symbols, and images into the wet medium of my canvas.