Hello, my name is June Moon. I am a visionary artist - I have no formal training and I have been painting for 25 years now. Art for me has always been a very personal spiritual journey, a longing for understanding and wholeness, a need to confirm the existence of God. My art is a reflection of the pure obsession of my spiritual path.

I was born in South Minneapolis in 1955, the fifth daughter of a Lutheran grocer. When I was 10 my father was killed by a robber, leaving my mother in a state of suicidal depression. Later, my oldest brother killed himself after returning from the Vietnam War and in response to the hopelessness my whole family felt. As a teenager I became obsessed with death and the meaninglessness of life. I felt totally abandoned in a cruel world and was determined to kill myself by age 17. I locked myself in a closet naked for a day and demanded that God - or the Universe - give me a reason to live. It was then I had a life-changing mystical experience. I felt or heard a voice come through me and say " WE ARE CREATED BY LOVE - FOR LOVE; WE ARE THE EXPRESSION OF LOVE - WE ARE LOVE." I had a vision that we are all immortal, and I knew my path in life was to express this through my art.

Earlier I had been given a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita and I fell in love with the beautiful flute-playing God named Krsna, so I painted a life-sized Krsna so that I could have God to talk to in my bedroom. I know it sounds crazy, but those eyes of love ( I started the painting with the eyes first) kept me believing when the world around me couldn't. Then I painted my laughing Jesus, which to me shows the transcendence of the spirit which knows the Joy that lies behind our sorrow. Then I got a book on Tantric art and was instinctively drawn to mandalas. In a world of chaos, mandalas - whether traditional Tantric or more personal archetypal designs such as the flaming heart - gave me a center and focus for my restless mind and spirit. They are a prayer for self-healing and a tool to help the subconscious open to a larger whole - a greater dimension of awareness. They transmit the sacred geometry of the universe in meditative, transformative visual images and center us in the oneness of the spirit.

About 4 years ago I decided to loosen up and started drawing with my left hand ( I am very right-handed), using the other side of my brain for a change. I feel my subconscious comes through my left-handed work and I love the freedom this gives me. I hope to explore this more and more in my personal work.

Much of my art is not original - it is a tribute to and an appreciation of the religious art of the past - sacred images that are very much a part of mankind's spiritual obsession.

I will continue to paint Gods and Goddesses from various cultures and I am sure that I will paint mandalas til the day I die. Some people have accused me of jumping on some New Age bandwagon, but these images are a part of me from my past lives; I cannot help but be drawn to them. In '92 I went to India and felt like I'd spent lifetimes there. I was amazed how much spiritual art and icons are a part of everyone's life. My art is only Temple art - something everyone would be doing as part of their spiritual training or worship. This art is an expression of the Divine in all of us. I belong to no set religion or creed - save the colors of the rainbow and a vision of unity behind all forms of the spirit.

Peace