1.GIRL IN THE PRICKLY PEAR, mixed media    2.girl on bowling ball, mixed media    3.Alphabet Blocks, mixed media    4.The Butterfly Ball, mixed media    5.coming in for the landing, mixed media    6.globetrotting, mixed media    7.guardian angel, mixed media        8.all gods children need traveling shoes, mixed media    9.the monarch queen, mixed media  10.blind trust, mixed media    11.lanneau magic, mixed media   12.passages, mixed media    13.gardners SALTED PEANUTS, mixed media    14.admit one, mixed media  

Life is everywhere.  The earth is throbbing with it.  The plants, the creatures, the ones we see.  The ones we don’t.  It’s like one big pulsating symphony.
Six weeks after my first child was born my beloved grandmother unexpectedly died in my arms.  The raw finality of my last moments with her as she LEFT this world so greatly contrasted with my son’s joyous entrance INTO it that I began to wonder how to  celebrate life while also deeply grieving for it.
After seven years of not making art I once again began to photograph and paint. The result is a series called “rayzel’s angels.”  At their core they’re visual meditations on the human experience, childhood whimsy, the passage of time, and the nonsensical nature of life.  They’re unconscious explorations of the thin realm that exists between what we see and what we cannot.   
Fairy tales, fables, and the surreal form the basis of my imagery along with nineteenth-century portraits, letters, and odd bits of ephemera.  By digitally combining antique photographs, my own original imagery and vintage ephemera I create multi-layered stories.  They are then further distressed and hand-colored using watercolor, colored pencils, pastels, and graphite giving them a unique, painterly feel.
All images are printed on archival watercolor paper using the giclee process.  Images are available in sizes ranging from 8" x 10" up to 20" x 24.”