You are married to a successful artist and devote so much energy and time to Alex's art.  You are yourself a very accomplished artist, but with less renown.  Can you talk about that?

Alex is the most profoundly amazing artist and person I have ever known.  It is a privilege to commit my life to sharing his brilliant art and thought with the widest audience possible, and to work toward its enduring permeation into world culture.  His art, which expresses transcendence and self-realization, takes on the most important subject about which creativity can address.  What better way to make a difference in my lifetime?  His success is my success.

It is true that my art is less renown, yet I have never given up painting and Alex encourages me.  We both feel that I'm doing the best work I've ever done.  Doing my art is a commitment of love and it gives me great pleasure to do it and share it with others.  The work I offer to the Chapel will be left as an enduring statement.

Divorce is so common today.  What do you think is the key to maintaining a loving relationship for 31 years?

Being best friends and having common goals works very well.  Being supportive of one another and seeing every challenge in the relationship as an opportunity for personal transformation -- this is essential for getting through rough patches.

Alex always credits me with the conception and title of the Sacred Mirrors.  Both publicly and privately, Alex honors my contribution to his life and work.  People who know us can see that I have dedicated myself to Alex's work.  This mutual honoring recognizes the part played by the other in our personal transformation, acknowledging the other as the "source" in ones life.  Wherever this mutual honoring falls down, that is where the relationship falls down.  Alex and I feel that seeing the "other" as "source" is the key to an ideal relationship.

A young couple, very in love, came to the Buddha to ask a question.  "We love each other so much," they said,  "and cannot bear the pain of knowing that one day we will be parted by death?"

The Buddah replied, "If you stay true to the teachings and follow the path in the same way, it is possible that you could be reborn as the same person."

Being as loving of yourself as you are of your most beloved could lead to being reborn as a Buddah.   It's a venerable goal.

You have worked and helped your daughter Zena begin an acting career.  How has it been as a stage mom?

It has been a gift that Zena and I have had this relationship throughout most of her life.  It has given us a common goal and brought us close together even in her teen years when it is so easy to lose touch.  I'm very grateful to Zena for including me on the exciting ride that it has been, taking me to so many interesting places and introducing me to so many fascinating people.

On the set, Zena is the focus and I am invisible which is great practice for my ego.  Being separated from Alex for periods of time has been an important practice of non-attachment and self-sufficiency.

You and Alex have raised a successful and responsible teenager and have been open and public about drug use in your life.  Do you have advice for parents?

Hypocrisy doesn't work with children.  They detect it and it has the most undesirable results.  Alex and I recommend telling the truth and only sharing as much as your young person is willing or interested to know.  That said, we feel that engaging in altered states of consciousness should be reserved for a more mature ego. There seems to be a natural "coming of age" at which time young people of many cultures often seek some experimentation with substances. 

I have been the kind of parent that worries and continually questions my own parenting, but at my best, I remember things I appreciated  about my parents, and I try to imitate them.  I recall the things I didn't appreciate and try to correct them.   Overwhelming, when my parents were candid and honest, I felt honored by their trust, but not necessarily motivated to follow exactly in their path.  In fact, often quite the opposite. 

You've been called the "Goddess of Get Your Shit Together".  Many people see your role as "the muse".  What's that about?

There is a kind of listening one can do when others talk about what they really want in different areas of their life -- their art, their relationships, their job, etc.  Sometimes one can be a mirror for that person and reflect back what seems so obvious to another but hidden from oneself.  I can be counted on to tell the truth as I see it.  I am firmly committed to supporting people in having a life they love, and believe firmly that having that fulfillment is entirely possible.

Now that we got that out of the way, let's talk about your art.

Your work is intensely meticulous and complex.  How did this evolve?

I started painting spectral squares in the late 70's after an acid trip I shared with Alex, which pointed us both in the direction of portraying the multi-colored strands of light energy that formed a vista of interconnected fountains and drains, flowing in a pattern that spread to infinity in all directions.  This experience lifted the veil over the loom-matrix of our highest identity, of being a node in the net of space and time.  This was clearly the most profound revelation of our existence, and was to become the subject of our art for a lifetime.

My work is based on the following principles:
• Life is a system made up of small cells or light/energy packets.
• Each square in the paintings is like a cell and the spectrum is a  system. 
• Life is comprised of order and chaos, symbolically portrayed in my paintings.
• Order is the experience of all things interconnecting.
• Chaos is entropy and dissolution of order. 
• Secret writing symbolizes all communication and creativity -- the unutterable truth beyond language that is pointed to by sacred text.

Secret writing in my paintings represents a language beyond literal interpretation, a language so universal that it cannot be translated.

Language is like a portal through which the inner world of order may pass into the outer world of chaos.

I work with oil paint and a small brush on a wooden surface. The piece is completely drawn in graphite and colored pencils before I begin to paint.  For me, making a painting is like creating a giant puzzle and a paint by numbers kit.  What the painting will look like is completely pre-determined but always somewhat of a surprise, like a photograph that develops before your eyes.