My art is about faith and hope. I know creation of a work of art often comes from unforgettable moments-- dormant in my heart. I am approaching a personal kind of abstraction from my own perspective. I do want the viewer to feel like everytime he or she looks at one of my paintings, they are each different and unique. I want the painting to not be what they first thought. I want someone to feel a bit overwhelmed; like this painting one see, has never been seen before.

In all my artworks, I do not exactly imitate or represent the actual world around us. I do believe that my art has the power to take on real meaning and deliver it into people's lives. While my content describes an inner world and inner, life, there is always an emphasis on content, commitment, and quality. Each piece has to mean something. Every mark I make I see as an affirmative act. It is a challenge to keep thinking sharply and to be on the edge where ideas are moving, challenging you, and giving you a kind of awe.

One of my greatest strengths is that there is always a sense of adventure to be seen. My art is my way of asking questions. I don't look for absolute answers. I do believe that life has to push you to a level to see a deeper truth-a simplicity-an attempt to reach some kind of purity. Everyone's life is fragmented with different variables. We're born with only our environment and free will and choice. I just want to make art that is very rich. Like life, I try to leave my viewers with supercharged images-sometimes tranquil, joyous, and sometimes depressed.

I have to paint about things that are important to me. I have never lost sight of why I became an artist. In some ways I have paid dearly for this life decision. I take risks everyday. Since the very beginning, I have never had any other choice. I want to live in the present. I can't change my past. I hope my paintings have the kind of magic I am looking for all the time.

You May Ask Me Why is the largest art project I have created since I graduated from Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis, Missouri. It is a mixed-media work which is built around my own words, starting in 2009 and will be completed in 2012. The text is so strong that it stands on its own. It has become a book. These words offer a detailed view of a "Womans Story."

I have combined real facts with the creation of a persona that is both "me" and "not me". I have created a new voice and these words speak without imposing my own voice. This woman is meant to exist as an autonomous person in her own right. My text, the narrative, found in all the different mediums, is to a certain extent autobiographical. How could it not be?

This project was inspired by a letter received which ended a 40 year marriage. From their first meeting, she knew his arrival into her life would be all she ever wanted. Until she opened the letter, she believed that he was the finest person she would ever want to know and trust. In part the letter read:

He has left her
He would have liked things to be different
To her, his last words were chilling,  "…MY BEST TO YOU."

This project, in utilizing many diverse art elements and mediums, consists of:

A book written and created as the heart of the project
10 new paintings using different sections from the book
10 multicolored vibrant handmade fiber art pieces created as a background for small white linen pieces printed with different feelings
12 individual 10"x10" pieces combinging plexiglass, handblown glass, paint and text
11 outdoor cement sculpures combining shapes and text

These original works in many different art elements will reach the heart of many women and men. Careless acts have life-changing implications. "THE WHY" can help hearts understand their own present life and choices. This project reflects my own spiritual journey.

As I have lived this life experience, I have been determined to retain my own sense of humanity and in doinng so found my own authentic soul. My intention through paintings, collage, fiber art and sculpture is to answer this one important question...

"Why the heart cannot go home."

Inspired by a series of paintings done by Turn of the Century artist Paul Cezanne in the late 1800's, this project is collection of eleven 5-foot sculptures consisting primarliy of partially hewn tree wood. Steel and contemporary hardware are components wiith wood stain accents, painted faces and layered wax finishes t protect the natural coloring of the wood.

There are 5 male and 6 female sculptures in the collection. Each sculpture is uniquely individual, and yet is clearly balanced as part of the entire collection. Each sculpture has a different gesture and even as each figure seems a bit awkward, one can see a feeling of sexual temptation from one piece to the next.

This collection exists somewhere between Cezanne's mysteries and the spirit of the materials used. There is created a spiritual discourse between culture, place, time and nature.

A new series has been started called My Totems. A Totem exists somewhere between a higher spirit and some kind of ritual object. I am talking from nature. Nature makes the tree grow, the tree falls over, and then it is Hilary's joy to give it a new life. At times in the process, she feels like something of a mystic who looks deep into god's tree. She wants to release something that was already there in a new way. Some of the wood pieces are found from the natural garden work of tree cutting.

Each of these totems radiates a bit of the mystery of the deep woods from which they originate. She wants the viewer to fill in the apparents voices. Hilary has learned to alter and re-shape hunks of wood in new surprising ways. She uses the variation of the wood's grain and natural cracks to express each piece individually; I have created a craggy primitivist look. She believes that she is collaborating with nature while using these spare wood forms. New techniques often mixes keeping the chisel marks on the exterior of the wood. Sometime what looks like stripes are deep oblique, saw-cut grooves. All the individual pieces retain enough of the raw wildness of nature to give them a strangely animate quality.

Looking at the premier piece, a 10' sculpture titled Adonis' Horse, Hilary states "I have coaxed an elemental grace and strength and while using abstract shapes. There is a very strong and inate intelligence in this finished pieces. I am led to those forms I use by the wood itself." Adonis' Horse is a collaboration or joining of art with nature.

Is a raw beauty -- Each totem piece has a vital energetic life force. Line is an essential element. Each piece is an independent entity . As we look at these sculptures we see light create illumination and shadows which filter over each piece. There is a raw beauty - these for the artist, they are breathing living things. Each basic sculptural form owes an enoromous debt and graditude to nature and god.