For too long my womanhood flowed out of my body in rivers of red and dried into deserts of brown; each loss was my erosion. I cleaned away each loss with water and remained strong to the external when the internal was eroding. Each loss was my corrosion. I was wrought iron weathering the divide between the unspoken to the spoken,  I drove my way into rust.

I come from an Island where in winter it is comforted by crashing waves of grey and skies of dark foreboding.  It was my lands landscapes that beckoned me within for comfort, by its cold fingertips of isolation. Walking beaches alone, as salted tears I would never shed poured down my cheeks easily, but these tears, were caused by the salted oceans spray. Pushing my body forward at what felt to me near forty-five degree angles, my body penetrated solid walls of wind, making headway in gales that blew. I walked beaches of coarse damp sand; never asking for mercy, because this cross, this predicament was mine alone to bare, so I walked alone into my own very youthful blindness.

All this was the beginnings of my decay.

In miscarriages the mirage of who I am – an iron vessel sunken, its history shipwrecked alone on a beach, in a state of continual corrosion. A ship is supposed to carry cargo safely from one shore to the next; in my vessel the strong iron of my very being lays oxidizing into the many colors of rust. Preservation brought iron to my artists palette and chemistry to turn it to rust.

Nature exhibits death can bring rebirth, only passing of time can show that that change. In almighty weakness my flight from domestic abuse took me from deserts of rusted reds to deserts of golden glows. From Decay (1996) added new metals to my palette; copper, gold fake and real and pigments of the earth.

Sea in Sea Room (1987) changed the flow of my palette forever, it introduced the corrosive powers of Salt. Salt then used in Preservation (1990) brought all the colors of decay as it corroded a vessel of iron. From Decay (1996) corrosive effects on other elements in nature my palette became extended. I found beauty and wisdom in the necessary cycle of decay.