We greatly appreciate the generous women who have contributed their spirit to Judith's Table. Many women have added their creativity to our pages and we thank them all. Judith's Table would not exist without these women. Below are artist's statements and biographical information about the professional artists and writers who have so kindly added their work to Judith's Table. We hope visitors to Judith's Table will enjoy learning about each of these women of spirit.

Synthia Saint James   Self-taught Artist/Author, Synthia Saint James was born in 1949 in Los A ngeles, California. Her professional career as an artist began in 1969 in New York City where she sold her first commissioned paintings. Today she is an internationally recognized fine artist. You'll find her work on over 50 book covers (which includes books by Alice Walker, Terry Mc Millan, Iyanla Vanzant and Julia Boyd), and on many licensed products. Since 1990, she has completed over 40 commissions for major organizations, corporations and individual collectors. She has 13 children's picture books cur rently on the market, three of which she wrote. Her accomplishments are many, from her creation of the first Kwanzaa Stamp for the United States Post Office to receiving the Coretta Scott King Honor for her children's book illustrations, to a ceramic tile mural design for the Ontario, California International Airport. Synthia Saint James has won numerous awards, has many magazine and television interviews, and has had her work exhibited worldwide. Visit www.synthiasaintjames.com  to learn more about Synthia Saint James and savor her creative spirit.

Eve Reid   Artist Statement: "My paintings are about the organic unity of all life:and that for me is symbolized by the Goddess. I have been painting the Goddess for twenty years. She is not an unapproachable deity who dwells in the rarified ethers of a superspiritual heaven. She is the earth I walk upon-the earth we all walk upon. She is the wheeling stars, the turning of the seasons, the mountains, rivers, lakes and plains. She is visible, tangible, reachable and homely: but in her depths the great mystery of the strangeness of the ordinary stirs and flexes, uncoiling into vision and dream.   Only by dreaming better dreams can we create a better world, a world in harmony with the greater rhythms of its parent universe; a world not severed from heaven by the whim of some patriarchal god; but joined to heaven by the red thread of the Goddess.   I admit there is a tension here. I feel it as I begin every painting. How to paint order and harmony in a world that jars every moral sensibility; a world out of key and out of tune. But these paintings are about faith; the faith that it need not be so. They are aware of the horrors-of the oppression of women, of ethnic minorities and dissidents, the torture and exploitation of animals-yet they look another way.   There is another way. As a Christian I constantly recall Julian of Norwich's words "sin is behovely, but all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well." And as one inspired by the ways of indigenous peoples I remember that the world is as you and I dream it. These paintings are good dreams. From good dreams we wake refreshed. May they refresh your spirit and give you faith."   Eve Reid, Scotland    To see more of Eve Reid's inspiring work visit her website at www.gaynor.co.uk/evereid. A gift for a woman's soul!

Janine Canan   Poet Janine Canan is the author of a dozen poetry collections which include In the Palace of Creation: Selected Works 1969—1999, Changing Woman, and Her Magnificent Body. Canan translated the German poetry of Else Lasker-Schüler in Star in My Forehead. She edited the award-winning anthology, She Rises like the Sun: Invocations of the Goddess by Contemporary American Women Poets, as well as The Rhyme of the Ag-ed Mariness: Last Poems of Lynn Lonidier, and just released, Messages from Amma: In the Language of the Heart. Her books have received commendation from Book Sense, City Lights Books, and Small Press Review. Her first collection of stories, Journeys with Justine, illustrated by Cristina Biaggi, will soon be out.   Janine is poetry editor at AwakenedWoman.com. A psychiatrist as well as a poet, graduate of Stanford and New York University School of Medicine, she resides in Sonoma, California. You may visit her at JanineCanan.com.

Raquel Partnoy    Raquel Partnoy's grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants who settled in Argentina shortly before World War I. When she painted the series "From Life," "Life's Windows," and "The Brides," she used her grandparents old photos to portray the negative and positive aspects of life. From then on she could never separate Life from Art. Her series "Life's Experiences" is related to the dictatorship in Argentina when more than 30,000 people "disappeared." In that series she tells of her own pain for the loss of her only daughter and son. Later series of work included "The Jewish People" and "Women of the Bible." In 1995 Raquel Partnoy moved to Washington D.C. After visiting the Holocaust Memorial Museum she felt that her series about the Jewish people and the one about the genocide in Argentina were unfinished. She began sketching a new one: "Surviving Genocide".   The figure of Ruth began to emerge from Raquel Partnoy's sketches for her series Women of the Bible. It was far more important than what she had expected. In the biblical history Ruth lies at Boaz's feet. In her drawings, on the contrary, he was lying at Ruth feet. She continued with the idea of portraying Eve grasping the apple from the tree. When she began to draw her naked body, she could imagine nothing but a pregnant figure, as if it were the only way to stress her importance as the first women who would generate the future. After doing sketches about Esther, Miriam, and the daughters of Lot, she realized that what she wanted was to rescue all those women from the discrimination treatment they had received over centuries.   You can contact Raquel Partnoy at rspartnoy@yahoo.com or visit her website at www.raquelpartnoy.net.

Ruth Sanderson   In 1974, Ruth graduated from the Paier College of Art in Hamden, Connecticut. Since then she has illustrated books for children of all ages, from Golden Books to young adult books, and classics such as Heidi and The Secret Garden. Since 1989 she has retold and illustrated many fairytales, including The Twelve Dancing Princesses, Papa Gatto, The Crystal Mountain, and The Golden Mare, The Firebird, and the Magic Ring. Her original fairytale, The Enchanted Wood, received the Irma S. Black award for best picture book of 1992, and the Young Hoosier Award in 1995.   Ruth’s paintings have been included in exhibitions around the country, including The Norman Rockwell Museum, The Society of Illustrators, The Original Art, the Delaware Museum of Art, the Art Museum of Western Virginia, the Words and Pictures Museum, and numerous fantasy and science fiction conventions. Her work has appeared on collector’s plates, greeting cards, fantasy book covers, and in magazine and advertising venues.   Ruth belongs to the Society of Illustrators, The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and The Western Mass Illustrator’s Guild, and she has been a guest speaker at many conferences and schools. She is married and has two daughters, and her favorite hobby is horseback riding.

Maria Lobo . Born and raised in Hong Kong, Maria Lobo's art training took her to Italy, Spain and the USA. Studying at the University of Santa Clara and the San Francisco Art Institute, she gained degrees in Fine Art and Painting in 1985. Maria returned to Hong Kong in 1994, having been part of the San Francisco Hunters Point artist's community. She has exhibited in the USA, as well as locally. Her current work is an exploration of her own cultural heritage and the environment in which she lives. Maria Lobo's work is inspired by the gold and silver of the prayer paper and images of ancestry. To see more of Maria Lobo's creative work visit her website at www.marialobo.com.

Pamela Coulter Blehert   Pamela Coulter Blehert is primarily an oil painter, primarily in oil and acrylics. She has over three-hundreed paintings in private collections and three in corporate/government collections. Pamela has received many top awards in local shows. Some of her paintings were featured in American Artist magazine (Feb. ’95) and some of her acrylic paintings) were included in the North Light Book of Acrylic Painting Techniques.  Until it closed in 1997, Pamela was represented by Venable-Neslage Galleries in Washington, D.C.  In 1998, she had a painting accepted for display in the National Art Club in New York City. She participates regularly in Art League shows at the Torpedo Factory as well as League of Reston Artist shows. She is currently looking for gallery representation.   An illustrator and cartoonist as well as oil painter, Pamela also worked until July 2004 as a technical writer and computer graphics artist for a local MD company. She still conducts an oil/acrylic workshops at the Reston Community Center. Pamela will do commissions and portraits from photos and sittings. Samples of Pamela’s paintings and poems can be seen (and heard) on her website at www.blehert.com.   Although Pamela Coulter Blehert considers herself primarily a painter, she has had poems accepted by Minimus, Tres di-verse-city (Austin international poetry festival anthology), Potomac Review (Spring 2003), the California Quarterly, and sundry other magazines. Pamela read at the Austin International Poetry Festival as a guest poet, at Iota, and at various other small local venues.

Linda Sharpe   Linda Sharpe writes "The fun is in allowing the creativity to flow-from my heart and soul-from my love for color, drama, fantasy and whimsy. For me painting is about putting color and form to paper to express feelings and ideas... I never know what will awaken out of the empty white or a form already painted. The picture paints itself and finds its own balance and resolution. Groups of people appear-ones that are not often depicted in art or photography- and tell me their stories. My work explores how individuality is challenged by relationships, how relationships pressure us to conform and how we respond to these demands." She is also a writer of personal development / spirituality books, a book on intuitive creativity, and several illustrated gift books. To see more of Linda Sharpe's wonderfully creative work, visit her website at www.lindasharpe.womanmade.net.

Sandra M. Stanton   Artist Statement: “The Venetian technique, perfected by the Old Masters, was used to create these paintings. Essentially, a ground color and turpentine are brushed onto the canvas, then a drawing is done on top. The next step is an underpainting in neutral tones. After this dries, oil glazes, that is, pigment and varnish medium, are built up in layers over the underpainting. In this way, light is reflected off the underpainting and back through the layers of transparent glaze. Since the layers need time to dry, each of the paintings takes a couple of months to complete so I work on 2 or 3 simultaneously. Once a painting is finished, it takes 3 to 6 months for it to dry well enough to apply a finish varnish on top.   Friends and acquaintances pose for the Goddesses so they look like real women rather than the common idealized versions of women we generally see in the media. The Goddess is in every woman and every woman is the Goddess, we just need to let Her speak to us.   A lot of research is involved before beginning each of the paintings. Generally, I read a myth and open my mind, letting the image enter. Each Goddess seems to want to be portrayed in a certain manner and She lets me know how in a number of ways. Sometimes the right model will show up at just the right time, or I'll stumble across a book with just the right artifacts or more information about a particular Goddess. In any case, I look at the Goddess and Her culture in depth and search for pertinent artifacts and gather ideas about companion creatures, locale and dress. It's a right and left-brained approach and feels like putting the pieces of a puzzle together. Often it seems as if someone else has been directing.   I started out in the early 70's doing social realist paintings and moved into classical mythology with a post-nuclear holocaust background in the early 80's. As I delved more deeply into the spiritual realm, a strong feeling emerged that I needed to go back further and further in time to find the roots of common mythologies and religions. That was when I stumbled upon Barbara Walker's Women's Encyclopedia of Myths & Secrets, followed by Merlin Stone's When God was a Woman. It was 1984 and I was home.   Since then, Goddess mythology has been my preoccupation, inspiration and the driving force in my life as it involves a completely different way of seeing the world than that to which we are accustomed. Dwelling with the Goddess means taking care of the Earth and treating all species and each other with respect and compassion. This way of living and being was once common on our planet. If it was possible before, it is possible again.”   To see much more of Sandra M. Stanton’s wonderful art and learn more about goddesses, please visit her website at www.goddessmyths.com. You will be enriched!      Please see page 2 of "Judith's Table Contributors" for more women of spirit who have contributed so generously to this website. Click here.

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