I have built a small library of themes and concepts over the time that I have seriously pursued image making, Trees, Dreams,  Charmstones, Landforms and colors, Flowers, Souvenirs, the Mind, Nets and Lattices, Fungus, and the list goes on. The newest themes and some are being renewed or seen/created in a different fashion, are charmstones(new), lattices (renewed), and feathers (new). Charmstones are based the so-called "charmstones" that are found in pre-European  archaeological sites here in the Americas. These stones were cut and ground into an infinite variety of tapered forms. And while their exact purpose is not fully understood, some have posited that they were worn, held, or kept on one's person as a type of magic; a sort of fetishized/personalized object that held specific powers for the owner. My charmstones take forms based on some of the many examples that I have seen or saw (I used to work at UC Berkeley's Hearst Museum of Anthropology where hundreds of these were housed). Finding the form is the first step, then many layers of different colors are applied in washes distinguishing or embedding it into the ground as the process reveals the painting. Then the charmstones are covered with dots sometimes as many as three passes of different colors over the whole piece, the colors reacting to the form behind them; and more recently I have been perforating the dots and adding a short piece of monofilament line quite like a hair growing out of a pore but it's monofilament fishing line of an intense color and behaves like fiber optic in the proper light (more about the monofilament later). The "lattices" or "net lattices" are both a new and old theme that also has roots in archaeology. Indeed archaeology is a theme across most of the work and a concept as well: the awe inspiring fact of humans making art and art objects across many millennia leaves us a rich and humbling tradition to draw from; and my process itself is archaeological- works are often long term commitments that have many layers that are hidden and revealed over time with the frequent spectre of no end in sight and then I find the piece, so to speak. Back to lattices. The lattices are visually based on hand woven nets and fabrics; rigorous working of  repetitious loops make a form like a funnel or vortex that might be used to capture something- wind, water, or dreams. Feathers are a new theme as well coming from a source of keeping chickens and watching birds for many years. Feathers, like hair, abound on a bird's body providing protection, loft for flight, camoflage, and beauty. I have been drawing forms using the basic form of the feather as a repetitious element. The forms have evolved into faces, simple, symmetrical looking but like real faces not symmetrical in the end. My tentative category or title for these works is "feather faces"- they're intense and complicated.