The pattern in “Existence” is inspired from a traditional quillwork rosette design historically applied to items such as jackets and saddles.  Most apparent within the piece is the pattern representing the four directions and the colours representing the 4 elements: earth, water, sun (fire) and the outside black is the universe (air).  These basic concepts follow beliefs found universally within indigenous cultures throughout the world.

The painting is an attempt to describe our lives as being one with the spirit world, not separate and apart, but everything existing on different planes of the same.   Done in hundreds of dots the circular shapes are suggestive of the cycle of life.  But more than that, the dots are a way to represent the sheer expanse of life from molecules to universes - and everything we see in between.   

The white dot in the centre symbolizes the "source" of all life, the Great Spirit, the one-ness from which we came and to which we return. In the painting, the centre is small because the mystery of life itself is too immense for us to truly comprehend. The wavy lines are the flow of existence like waves of a tide, and movement from the source into our universe.  From the white dot at centre emerges an umbilical like wire of beads and shell representing our birth from the spirit world into the physical world we know in life.