“In folkloric terms, animal horns on a female figure indicate healing and shamanic powers, as well as the ability to cross boundaries – between the human world to the Wilderness World (as the Yaqui call the spirit realm), between male and female, between animal and human. If a painter or writer is to be guided by her Muse, then she must be able to negotiate boundary crossings.

“The figure is wounded, as many of my figures are, to acknowledge the difficult passages of life rather than to fear, repress or ignore them; to celebrate the strength and wisdom that comes from hard experience. Clothes half-on, half-off her body indicate a state of transformation – she is either shedding her human consciousness or returning to it from a primal animal state.”

painting by Terri Windling