In my book, Gnostic Narratives, I juxtapose images of my paintings and drawings next to the various ancient texts that inspired them. The Coptic texts discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945, I have used the James Robinson translations: The Nag Hammadi Library¹. I also used Gilles Quispel's interpretation of Valentinian creation, The Original Doctrine of Valentinus²; as well as passages from Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 from the Old Testament.

By placing images alongside text from these ancient gospels, I hope to show the reader how different, yet strangely familiar these gospels are to those within the biblical tradition. These gospels were considered "heretical" and therefore, by the fourth century, excluded from the increasingly established Romanized Church. They not only show what the Christian tradition "may have been", but also, they illuminate a mere fragment of how truly diverse early Christian communities were.

Within these texts there is: a feminine depiction of the divine; a means to achieve enlightenment and transcendence through one's "self-knowledge" and personal, intuitive understanding of God; and altogether different interpretations of biblical events such as Creation, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Creation, for example, is described in lush and sexually symbolic terms by the early Christian writer, Valentinus. His writings, suppressed by the early church, greatly differ from the tradition that we inherited, where sex and the body are associated with carnal sin and the 'fall of man'. These texts offer roles for women as spiritual and intellectual leaders. Greatly in contrast with the impossible roles for women portrayed within the biblical tradition: from Mary Magdalene, the repentant prostitute; Eve, the temptress whose sin brought down all of humanity; or Mary, the virgin mother, "whose impossible sexuality both idealizes and frustrates the role of real women"³

These early Christian texts are part of a western tradition of which we, in the west, were excluded. In showing my own understanding of them visually I attempt, for my own small part, to bring to light what may have been part of our western pictorial tradition. With this exploration, I hope to better understand how and why we think the way we do about God, about sexuality, about our bodies and about our relationship to others-- both within and outside our own religious and cultural system.

Though I have yet to secure a publisher for this book, once one is established, Elaine Pagels (author of The Gnostic Gospels, and Beyond Belief) will write the preface and Gilles Quispel will provide an introduction as well.

¹Nag Hammadi Library, James Robinson: General editor, 1988, Harper Collins, New York, NY
²The Original Doctrine of Valentine, Gilles Quispel, 1947
³The Gospel of Mary Magdala, Karen King, 2003, Polebridge Press, Santa Rosa, CA p.149