Painting is a magical, mysterious process for me. Sometimes an image flashes in my mind, fully formed, for just a split second, and I am left with the task of translating it into physical form. Other times I sit down to a blank canvas with an empty mind and see what emerges. It's like dreaming on canvas, unfolding as it happens and revealing messages to be felt or interpreted later. Often when I finish, I shake my head with nonrecognition, wondering where such a thing came from. I am often told later by someone that they have seen that very thing in a vision or a dream. Those moments remind me that we are all connected to the same source.

My work is multifarious. It doesn't all fit neatly into itself, though there are several continuous threads it follows. Yet all take inspiration from the same source- pulling up the deep mysteries beneath the skin of nature, and the human soul as an outgrowth of it. Both are vast and magnificent, and my work seeks to touch upon my sense of enchantment of this diversity- from the delicacy of a flower petal, to the raw power of a volcano. From the innocence of a baby, to the complex psychology of an evolving woman.

I cannot disconnect myself from place. Details of my environment, from the many places I've traveled and lived, make their way into my work and the paintings emerge from the place where my inner and outer worlds meet. My early life is the soil from which the work has grown. Deep in the night of a dark moon, I was born in northeastern Pennsylvania at the very peak of the luminous autumn colors. As an adult, I can see with a smile how those vibrant colors and that furtive and enigmatic night place continue to form the basis of my work.

My signature is my homage to the ancestral lineage of artists before me. Throughout the world people have left their mark on cave and rock walls, some dating back 32,000 years, by leaving an outline of their hand. I've always had an aversion to signing my name on paintings and left most of them anonymous and unsigned for years- until I realized that I could follow in the handprints of an ancient tradition. I photocopied my right hand then made stencils in various sizes for different sized works. So what you see is an actual replication of my hand. In the center I place the universal symbol of the spiral- representing life from enormous galaxies, to tiny DNA.

When I'm not in my creekside studio in the forests of 
West Marin, CA, or studying movement-based Expressive 
Arts Therapy and Education at the Tamalpa Institute, 
I'm in a near or far off place dancing or painting someone's wall. 

More of my work, including commissions, 
can be seen at calalarioni.com