Me, the kid, the mighty bike and the elements

Collage and acrylic painting, 12 by 16 inches.

Even before I got cancer, I knew that biking was great to keep in shape (body and mind). I used a picture of me as a kid, to which I painted wings of a flying fish. As a kid I bit a dent into my gold birth-medallion. So I figured, if I could do that as a little girl with my first teeth, maybe there's some juice left in me to cope with cancer. The flying fish wings refer to a song by Lhasa. In "Soon This Space Will Be Too Small," from her album "The Living Road," she sings :"And the flying fish will set me free..." Since hearing that song, flying fishes will sometimes turn up on my paintings. Around the edges I wrote the text of an old Inuit song, that was shown in the last frame of the movie "Never Cry Wolf." It goes:

I think over again

My small adventures,

My fears

Those small ones that seemed so big,

For all the vital things

I had to get and to reach.

And yet there is only one great thing,

The only thing,

To live to see the great day that dawns

And the light that fills the world.