An earlier work, this painting contains renderings of mandalas or sun burst images which are common to the rock art of the Chumash.  Toloache, an hallucinogen derived from the datura plant, would be ritually ingested to achieve greater mystical insight.  The visions  often included perceptions of bright colored mandalas over the normal field of vision and were followed by the appearance of tiny white dots around anything else looked at for the several days that followed. (Peterson, 1992, p. 80)
My renderings of the mandalas are accompanied by stencils of my hands which represent an attempt to physically touch and connect to the images.
The title is loosely derived by the title of Carobeth Laird’s autobiography, An Encounter with an Angry God.

An Encounter with Forgotten Gods
31”x26”
Modified Acrylic Paint on Canvas
1995
In the collection of the artist
NFS