Dancing the Yes / In the Swim of the Rose # 2 / Ariadne's Thread

The human body is present in all my paintings. Symbolizing the intersection of biological and intellectual, the body mediates the dance between nature and abstraction. In an elusive paradox, we exist within oppositions, remaining separate yet always part of a whole. The geometric forms I favor evoke pattern, matrix, and environment-associations of location. They come together in "anthropomorphic masses" of bodily configurations and movements. Drawn from many thematic sources-myth, philosophy, psychology, literature, and scientific theory-the images for my acrylic paintings are derived through a combination of traditional sketching and computer modeling and are hand-finished using an exacting hard-edge technique. Dancing the Yes is a celebratory painting about life's affirmatives: the constant coming together of two into one in the act of creation, an act that continually generates new vitality. Its content refers to sexuality, but its stress is not on the erotic. Both In the Swim of the Rose #1 (on front cover) and #2 employ a swimming figure motif to represent the self on a journey toward center. My fascination with maneuvering through life's metaphorical labyrinth finds its way into Ariadne Thread, a painting with emphasis on the guiding quality of the feminine.

MAJORIE MIKASEN is a painter living in Lincoln, Nebraska. Originally from Chicago, she is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in studio arts. She has worked as a fine artist for many years, exhibiting her work in solo shows in Nebraska and participating in over sixty-five group exhibitions in twelve states and also in the United Kingdom. In 1997 she served as president of the Nebraska Women's Caucus for Art, and she maintains that organization's website.

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