My work is narrative--it tells stories. That is literally the case in the graphic novels of Adam and Eve where I write Eve's autobiography and explore her mental and emotional adjustment to the garden of Eden. These graphic novels combine words with pictures. In other series, the images alone interpret existing stories: Abraham and Isaac, Adam and Eve. Here I plumb the stories to discover emotional connections and friction among the characters. So what is narrative art? Webster's Dictionary defines it as the representation in art of an event or a story. It is a translation from a story which unfolds in a line through time to one in which time is stopped in a single image. Stories are told in words whereas narrative art is expressed in pictures. My narratives are told in color and gesture, shiny and glittery surfaces to convey mood and feelings. Words on a page tell the story in a linear way, through time. The reader or listener is confined to that narrative track. A painting, on the other hand, is seen whole, at a glance. The viewer constructs the story by reading the visual art in the picture. It is a circular, personal process as the eye moves around the picture, making sense of what he sees. Narrative art is an active endeavor which requires viewer involvement for the story to reveal itself. Just as stories told in words require an understanding of the language in which the story is told or written, so viewers of visual stories must have a familiarity with the language of art. What is this language and how do we learn it? Nearly everyone in our culture knows how to look at pictures and understand their meaning. We were all read stories with pictures as children. The reader pointed out a cow or a dog in the picture. Soon we were asked to point to the cow or the dog or the truck or train. As the stories became more complicated so did the pictures. With this progression, our ability to read pictures grew so that we could look at a picture and grasp its meaning without resorting to words. We read body language in people, wind speed and direction in trees, human emotions and relationships in faces--we learned these visual cues. When I begin a painting, I have in mind a specific scene. The initial drawing is guided by my inner artist steeped in my knowledge of the story. I trust that first drawing to guide me into color and texture. I am constantly surprised by what I discover about the story as I work my way through the painting process. Although I know the basic story before I begin to paint, I create the whole series to discover what the story means for me. None of my paintings is complete until a viewer enters the picture and moves around, finding connections and relationships among the color, gesture, line, and texture. In this process, she builds her own understanding of the story, unlike that of anyone else. I wish this experience for all of my paintings and all of their viewers.