The art team we call Stanleah has been producing figurative paintings together as wife and husband for the past fifteen years. We work side by side on every painting and consider our life’s work to be totally collaborative. Being a compatible and complementary couple makes being a painting art team possible.

In 2006 we moved from Santa Barbara (where we had grown to become fascinated and influenced by the Chumash Indians and other indigenous peoples) to Santa Fe. Almost immediately, we fell under the spell of this special place and began to change as people and artists. It was as if the light of the high desert  focused us on many levels.

In 2007 we visited Scotland for the first time. This trip confirmed our premonition that a profound affinity exists between that wet, green place and its earthy folk and the dusty, dry desert and unpretentious people of New Mexico. It was typical of us to see this link since a continuous, recurrent theme in our work has always been  to explore the common threads which tie together seemingly disparate people, places and, indeed, even design motifs. In recent paintings this is exemplified in the Celtic endless knot design which overlays Seeing Beneath the Surface as well as the sacred geometrydiagrams drawn over the faces of The Warrior: State 1 and Butterfly in Butterfly and White Buffalo.

All of this assimilated knowledge is reflected in our most recent work which, with few exceptions, were all executed in oils and acrylics on raw linen. But their most pervasive quality is surely their aura of spirituality. Sometimes you see it in the face of an Indian yet you are equally likely to see it in the face of an animal or an angel. Obviously, it is manifest in sacred places; less obviously, its presence is felt in a well-used, old saddle. It is even distilled in a compositional format , e.g. the mandala of Hooded Monk with Blue Spheres. Many of our recent paintings hang loosely unframed—frayed, tattered, patined by time. Tactile and comforting, we intended them to redress current worldly woes. All of the riders in the Rider Series are simultaneously strong and warm-hearted. Whatever animal they are astride, they ride bareback without bridles or reins, their control derived from the sense they convey  of being in a state of “power with” the ridden rather than “power over” (another  frequently explored theme of ours), their warm-heartedness reflected in facial expressions of elation, compassion or innocence. All of this, it seems to us, is very Indian. And very Scottish.