Housewife. What does that word mean for me as an artist? Do I not look like an artist? Must I starve like an artist? I worked hard and married outside of the art world. I reared a beautiful daughter. Does that make my art a "hobby"? Must I drag the Housewife label like a ball and chain with me through the art world?

I don't cook. I don't clean. I am at my daughter's side shadowing her like a net under a trapeze artist. I am a partner to my husband, navigating together a life that I take pride in. I have fed. I have nurtured. I have loved. I am loved. I have resolved conflicts - and created them. I get an occasional manicure.

Am I still a Housewife? Is that all there is? Do I let the word define me? Who am I?

I am ANGRY. I have been held hostage in the complicated relationship of marriage. I am CLEVER. I have used my sexuality in the complicated relationship of marriage. I am BLESSED. I have given birth to my pride and joy.

I am FORTUNATE to be a woman. I paint a REQUIEM to the word…HOUSEWIFE.

Yet I revel in the word HOME. I have envisioned a Home. For and with my family; for, in and through my art. I rejoice in its walls, I rejoice beyond its walls. I carry its protection with me like an invisible citadel.

I didn’t grow up in a traditional home so much as a series of relocations. For the first 26 years of my life, I moved from place to place, from country to country, from culture to culture. At two, I was in a French nursery school in New York. Then I moved to Israel, and spoke only Hebrew when I moved again to London, in 1972 I found myself in San Francisco, sporting an English accent. Now, finally, in Los Angeles. I have come to rest. My roots are no longer disjointed and in the air. I have a physical Home.

Yet I spend my days fighting battles against Housewifedom. Against preconceptions. Against creative obstacles. So Home is something else again… Home is more than a place. It is the pause between the battles, the space between the strands in the nest. The gap between Wife and Mother and CEO and even Artist.

When I come Home, I come Home to my ideas. My vision. The forms I have created. The silence underneath it all.

Home is Self. The source, the goal and the space, wrapping like a nest, around it all.