This Painting is of the deepest sentiment to me. I started it when my children, now 22, 19, and 17 were the ages they are in the painting. The canvas was one I'd had around since I was a teen, started something, didn't like it, kept it around in case inspiration struck, it moved with me from my parent's house in Carson City, to Tahoe where I lived with my boyfriend who would become my husband, to a shack in Reno, to a mobile home in Reno where life was hard. I was poor with three small children and my marriage was...tense.

Once I remember being miserable and angry and writing out my frustrations in anger on the canvas. I couldn't have those unhinged words hanging out around my house and I was too poor to buy more canvas anyway, so when I was inspired by the paintings of artist Mark Hensen at a music festival, I finally began using that damned huge canvas! I had always been frustrated with modern society and have always dreamt of a way out. The scene on the left, expresses how I was feeling - dull, flat, hopeless, trapped, and poisoned. It is actually the small kitchen in that mobile home (with the smoke stacks added for statement). I had little time or space to create there however, and the left side was all there was for years. It moved with us again in 2012 when I had been working as a jeweler for about 5 years and was able to buy my own home, with the help of my parents and my incredibly generous boss. Still, it sat unfinished. I'd work on it a bit every few years, but life, children, a full-time job and a miserable marriage left little energy or creative spark in me.

In 2015 I blew my life up. It took about 7 years for the pieces to settle into the beautiful life I have now, and last year I FINNISHED IT! The now completed right side is how I believe humans were meant to live. Bright and vibrant, joyous and at one with the nature around us. Tribal. Free. As long as I'm alive, the original will not be for sale. it means everything to me, and my children grew up looking at it and watching me struggle to get to a place of completing it.

For those whose hearts resonate with its message, I've created prints of "Colonial Consequences." Each 24x36 inch gallery-wrapped canvas print is 1 1/2 inches thick, hand-signed, and numbered. Limited to only 100 prints, this piece encapsulates a transformative journey and a vision of life lived brightly.