I've been celebrating life by creating art while listening to Billie Holliday, Josephine Baker, Charles Aznavour, Jean Gabin, and Edith Piaf. Art making is totally living in the moment, unlike any other human experience I can describe. There is no sense of time, only a feeling of divine ecstasy. It is like being in a dream, except that I am wide awake. As the music leads me into this trance, my hands create wild, crazy lines. The spirit humors me with its candor, and I just laugh as the drawings entertain me with their total lack of inhibition. As the images appear like magic on the page, I truly feel that I am being visited by artistic spirits who come to inspire and entertain me. Only after I completed this new charcoal series did I recognize Botero, Picasso, Matisse, and Keith Haring as my "Spirits of Inspiration." They came into my imagination and inspired these works into this realm of reality called life.

"The Little Botero Girl in Matisse's Room" is one of 50 large, poster-sized charcoal drawings in this inspired series. See, for yourself, how she was inspired by Botero and Matisse.