I have fought and strove to keep this part of me, arguably the only animating force in me, alive. As I have gone through life I have discovered over and over again that the depth of life is anchored in our perception of beauty and shadow.

The artist is always wrestling with this, it is the igniting force in all their work. The beauty that tries to emerge from the darkness. It is the conscious and the subconscious, the ego and the shadow, the light and the dark.

While the shadow has a negative connotation, it is the very force that sets us on our path of discovery. Without it we would not art, creation, invention, and so on. It is the very tension that sees creation as it is as well as what it could be.

The artist is the inventor, is the creator, is the visionary. The artist sees the emergence of being in real time, as they are often the ones right on the edge, trapped between two worlds, and calling out to the rest of humanity of what could be… or what lurks beyond.

Art ignites souls because it is created by souls ignited.

I am an artist. I tried to kill this fire inside of me, but it kept reigniting. I am a writer, director, actress not because I necessarily want to be, but because something in me says I must be.

Here’s to my film, my poem through a frame:

Leilel: The Mirror Anthology