About

Welcome to ANATOMY AWAKE, a vision of heal­ing, human well-being and bal­ance.  A rev­o­lu­tion­ary view of “Man made in the image of God.”  Liv­ing in our biol­ogy, are reflec­tions of spir­i­tual arche­types. This view can inspire a renewed love and heal­ing of oth­ers and our­selves.  I have cre­ated these orig­i­nal oil paint­ings, based on true human anatomy, to help cre­ate an appre­ci­a­tion of the nature of humans and remind us that we are all cre­ated in God’s image(ination).  I invite you to pon­der and explore.  Dis­cover the beauty of your inner self and others.

Inspi­ra­tion

It began many years ago, as I stood in anatomy class hold­ing a sheep’s heart in my hand. I was recall­ing a lec­ture about the coro­nary arter­ies and the trans­la­tion of coros as crown. As I pon­dered this thing in my hand that was no doubt slimy and obscure it struck me how much these arter­ies looked like thorns. It was then that the real­iza­tion of the ref­er­ence “crown of thorns” hit me. We are cre­ated in God’s image. It doesn’t mat­ter what your reli­gious beliefs or lack there of are; we are most define­taly amaz­ing, divine creations.

The search was on. I began to learn about the body and its con­nec­tions to spir­i­tual lit­er­a­ture. I see the body as radi­at­ing energy all about, in and around it. Metaphor­i­cally and at times lit­er­ally. For exam­ple, The human heart sends off more energy in one beat, than the brain does all day.

Each one of our bod­ies is a unique cre­ation with vari­ances and indi­vid­u­al­ity. My insides have the same basic lay­out as most every­one else (although some peo­ple have trans­posed, miss­ing or fused organs) but the strengths and weak­ness of them are dif­fer­ent. A per­son may have an extra ver­te­bra or an extra rib or may be miss­ing one. Extra fin­gers and toes are not uncom­mon, though in the United States they are fre­quently removed. Many of these vari­ances we are taught to be fear­ful of as med­ically risky. Indeed, some can be life threat­en­ing, but that does not change the won­der of our cre­ation. A “defect” that came from a parent’s self abuse or from a genet­i­cally passed on trait, or from some other know or unknown source becomes irrel­e­vant in the func­tion­ing in day to day life. We do the best we can with what we have. Besides, our bod­ies, in per­fec­tion, are designed to live a VERY long time. We abuse our­selves, our envi­ron­ment abuses us, and we abuse each other. If this most sacred ves­sel were treated with a lit­tle more rev­er­ence and appre­ci­a­tion, how much more sat­is­f­ing our exis­tence would be.

As a reg­is­tered nurse spe­cial­iz­ing in car­diac (heart) care, I work with peo­ple in suf­fer­ing all the time. Every­one of them, I need to remind about healthy diet, the impor­tance of exer­cise, stress man­age­ment and a lit­tle bit of self love. I have to remind myself every day of the same things.

We are sacred cre­ations. If you just see blood and guts, then you are only see­ing the out­side. How did we form? How did these ref­er­ences and names that live in the body, Bible, and other spir­i­tual texts come to be? What is the rela­tion­ship? What is the sig­nifi­gance? Why are we here?

I hope that my artis­tic vision is an eye open­ing expe­ri­ence for oth­ers and fos­ters an awak­en­ing to the amaz­ing­ness that we are. I hope that there is recog­ni­tion of the human con­di­tion, good, bad, or oth­er­wise, as liv­ing in our anatomy. Our suf­fer­ings as well as our dreams and aspi­ra­tions live in all of us in a very phys­i­cal way. The body is our Temple.