There’s something about that line “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” in the movie The Wizard of Oz that seems to me to explain every level of existence.  I mean, it’s so natural to take our experiences at face value, or read various personal interpretations into them, that we can easily miss the truth.  I’m referring to the actual essence of life, that crossover place between fundamental wave and particle, the eternal moment in space/time neither past nor future, where light forms energy and matter on a continual basis… The more I observe color patterns and contrasts, really sensing the energy in the subjects I paint, the more I’m noticing this true “’man’ behind the curtain”—the Eternal Now—wherever I look.  This is the focus of my work: using color and textures to pull that curtain back for you, revealing an anchoring glimpse of Reality.

--Mariya Rivera