My work has always been “personal” despite the constant advice against it. I work from my center: my experience as a woman, a mother, a wife; a domestic, intimate life. Occasionally, I stumble into political content as in “King of Hearts, Power Puff Girl” in the Democracy Now exhibit at the Regional Arts Center.

I often incorporate found personal objects, or paint on these objects. I have long been fascinated in the way we leave a bit of our spirit on the things we touch and how these things tell our story after we’re gone.

Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, curator of the Sheldon Art Museum galleries, wrote about my work, “Cheerful, vibrant colors belie underlying serious psychological issues that often have to do with interpersonal relationships.”

One “interpersonal relationship” I have hesitated to explore in my work is the sudden violent death of my father when I was barely an adult. Afraid of over sentimentalizing that experience, I have mostly avoided it.

Last May, I woke up to a phone call. A close friend, Fr. Lorenzo Rosebaugh, OMI, had been gunned down in Guatemala. Twenty seven years ago, I woke to a similar phone call informing me of my father’s death, also by a hand gun. All of my current planned work came to a halt last May.

All seemed insignificant. Lorenzo was dearly revered by the children he served and had just buried two young teens, victims of gun violence. He worked tirelessly for social justice.

So last summer I began a project, “Faces,” painting the portraits of children who have died, the victims of gun violence. I paint a watercolor portrait of each child, which is donated to the family. An acrylic transfer of that image is used to collage the “Faces” on small vintage handkerchiefs. The handkerchiefs is symbolic for loss, the “found” fabric element constant in my work. I plan to exhibit these in various ways: strung together like the memorial funeral banners in South America; connected quilt like; bound into a soft fleshy book; and on websites that further protest gun violence.

The initial exhibit of three young teen “Faces” on handkerchiefs was at the St. Charles Foundry this Feb. in the National Women’s Caucus for the Arts exhibit. They had been juried into the show by Yolanda Lopez.

These children are not just numbers or statistics. Each one of them was a life ended. Each one has a face.

Is it personal? Yes. How can my audience feel moved by my work if I don’t first feel strongly moved to make it?