Teresa James' new drawing focus on strong, uncanny signs of cheer and hope amidst other ominous signs of danger, pain, sorrow and loneliness. Graphite on gessoed metal, these emblems are set in oval cartouches against a white ground that is artfully smudged to produce an illusion of depth, as if the drawings were embossed medallions of some unknown country of feeling, or offerings to be left at an altar as requests for divine intervention. These tiny pieces seem like fragments of narratives never to be known or completed. The winged hands that appear in all the drawings but one (hands there, too, but without wings) are graceful but unsettling-are they a new kind of creature, or the severed remains of a whole person who has suffered a terrible fate, even a martyrdom? (A few of the hands bear surprising sort of stigmata. And occasionally a bad hand appears, immediately recognizable because it is not of the living flesh, but only skeletal).

Working small, James rejects the grand gesture and the public space in favor of the image as subject for intimate viewing and private meditation. James' technique is fluid, fantastical, and virtuoso in application of graphite, creating not only unique images but also a peculiar visual wit and a mood that is immediately recognizable as her own. She calls the tiny wings that sprout at the wrists of these hands "Spirit Wings," and she creates a visual metaphor by nesting one like a spirit bird in the drawing called "Through Tenderness Fearlessness is Born." In fact, the title of the drawings are like mottoes of a positive spiritual attitude in the face of an "uncertain Future and Faltering Steps"; they offer solace and advice for a life that could be generous and courageous; "Bury All Bitterness" and "Hoard Nothing"- a life " So Human Yet So Divine." Under an almost totally soot-black sky and a moon looking helplessly on, a grounded, fallen hand is accompanied by the motto, "Against All Hope On."