Barbara Mowchan Middleton grew up with the incense, icons and images of the Byzantine church tradition of Russian Orthodoxy. This spiritual heritage influences her relationship to her watercolor and ink expressions on paper. Her “hands on “ approach to wetting her paper is literal as she blends water into paper with sensual, fluid, circular motions of fingertips and palms, sometimes adding pigment as she strokes. The paper preparation comes after incense and meditation which “directs” the next step, the actual presentation, which she calls “ spiritual expressionism”. The work emerges, fluid and organic. The names of the piece and the prose,which often follows, flow from the work itself to create a verbal expression of the spiritual and visual.

“In birthing human life the process of creation is wet, fluid and unpredictable. I experience my work with watercolor, sumi ink and organic paper to be the same... birthing the life of my creative spirit flows with the path of water and the Divine. My work reflects my connection with the ancient Great Mother, Mother Earth and the feminine, which is immanent in all matter/mater. My work expresses the cycles of pain, sadness, anger and freedom. The joy of the female experience...my experience is a journey into the vivid landscapes of mind, body and spirit, which for me is the journey of soul.”