Labyrinth (acrylic on canvas) - "I was thinking in mandalas, and then I saw in some book this labyrinth that was on the floor of the cathedral in Chartres.  I had never seen it when I had been there.  But then I looked at it, and I followed it around and around, and I saw that it was only one way, that you couldn't get lost, and that you had to go the whole bit.  It appealed to me even more that the monks would help, because of their meditation -- and so I started out with just that.  I started it at Yelping Hill, because it was getting kind of late... I think we stayed later. And I changed the perspective to give it depth, and give it even more feeling to the center.  I took a long time working that out to get it right.  And then Nick came in and said, 'I know Ma, she's going to fill it with beasties!' And I looked, and he was right.

"Then it took a long time for all these different characters to go through all their different experiences: swimming across that lake and almost drowning, meeting all these things, and some helping each other, and so forth.  At each change there had to be something to confront, see, grapple with.  Face.  And it all began to make more sense as I painted it, as I began to see how it fell together... it was falling together for me.  Then I got to the end and I said, here it is.  The moment sort of dissolved into this Light.  And so I had the one sort of disappearing into the Light.  But the one just before it is leaning down and helping the one below it - just giving a hand to help that one up...

"It shows that you think you're on the right direction and you look across and you say, Gee that guy's all on the wrong path, and he's even going the wrong direction.  Then he can go around and he's further away from the Light, the whole bit.  You start out quite near the Light, you go, you get drawn up close, and then you have to come back and he's even further away than he realized, but he's ahead of you when you get around the next corner.  He was going the right direction.  You were going the wrong direction."