SHADOW WORK
Embroidering and appliquéing into this series of shadow self portraits has been a meditation and a way of looking at my life in nature and in the city. I walk daily, finding that the shadows reflect these journeys and mark place and time of day which further gets marked in thread and color. These pieces allowed for long hours of contemplation as I worked slowly into the images with needle and thread, sometimes with the machine but more often by hand. Thread has always been sacred to me. The thread that binds is the one that I have followed from the time I was very young. This series is about those who have passed on and live in our memories. As the Upanishads believe, “thread connects this world with the next and all beings to one another.”
Shadows connect me to an emerging part of myself as I age. I have been contemplating the idea that Jung expressed, “the shadow represents the totality of the unconscious layers of the personality, which are transformed and integrated consciously, step by step, in the process of individuation.“
In the shadow portraits I see myself aging and yet ageless, alone and in connection to others, in nature and man-made settings, part of nature and yet flattened, timeless, and faceless.
