This series of paintings arises from a lifelong devotion to embodiment, consciousness, and the reclamation of what has been rendered invisible. The clitoris—an organ largely hidden, rarely named, and profoundly misunderstood—became a potent symbol for me: a source of pleasure, vitality, and mystery that mirrors women’s historical experience in patriarchal culture. What is most essential has been silenced, diminished, or ignored. These paintings are an act of making the invisible visible, the unheard heard, and the unrecognized important.

My work is shaped by my spiritual awakening and the years of sacred reconfiguration that have followed. As my own sexuality reawakened later in life—embodied, conscious, and alive in ways I had not previously known—I discovered for the first time the full anatomical image of the clitoris. I was struck by the irony that such a fundamental organ of female pleasure is mostly internal and largely unknown, even to those who possess it. Sketching and painting these forms felt like paying homage: a devotional act toward pleasure itself, toward the feminine body, and toward the wisdom encoded within it.

These images are not intended to be graphic, rather beautiful—whimsical, organic, and evocative of the natural world. Like my earlier series of much larger-than-life insects, they draw attention to what is usually overlooked, dismissed, or met with discomfort. Viewers may first experience curiosity, awe, or even amusement before recognition arises. That moment of questioning—What am I seeing? Why have I never really seen this before?—is part of the work, our work.

Across cultures and spiritual traditions, female sexual anatomy has long been revered as sacred: the yoni, the primordial womb, the portal of creation. This series stands in deep conversation with those traditions while also confronting the modern erasure of embodied feminine sexuality, especially in elder women. At a time of life when women are culturally expected to fade, these paintings assert vitality, pleasure, and desire as ageless. They challenge internalized shame—my own and our collective—and invite dialogue that may be uncomfortable, transformative, or liberating.

Ultimately, these works are an offering: a celebration of the sacred feminine in all her forms, an honoring of embodied consciousness, and an invitation to reclaim pleasure, visibility, and reverence as inherent aspects of being fully alive and joyfully female.

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*GOKIS = Georgia O’Keefe Insect Series

The Clitoris: An Education in Pleasure