The Wood Wife Series

The Wood Wife series was inspired by the fantasy novel “The Wood Wife”, written by award winning novelist, Terri Windling. The book takes place in the Tucson desert, where the land, the water and the sky are personified as shape shifting spirits dwelling between the elements, animals and human beings. In the book, a painter, goes out into the desert to capture in drawing and painting, the spirits that oversee the desert. Having read the book a decade ago, and returning to it once I’d visited the desert for the first time, I was thunder struck by the descriptions of these spirit beings and experienced them dwelling at the corner of my consciousness. I chose to bring each character to life by threading friends and family to a particular description, making the portraits personify not only the spirit of the character but also the person who posed for the portrait. The portraits are intended to capture each being in the state of shapeshifting. As human beings, we are all shapeshifting through time and space, but are rarely caught transitioning between one state and another. The portraits exist as both graphite rendering and finished paintings in a variety of media including watercolor, pastel, colored pencil, acrylic and oils. Various pieces have been accepted into the Society of Illustrators and the Society of Illustrators West, American Illustration, as well as Shortlisted in the Communication Arts Annual. The hills call in a tongue only the language-haunted hear, and lead us back again into the place where we have started. ~The Wood Wife