SELECTED COMPLETED WORKS TO DATE
Reno Tarot is an ongoing body of work developed since 2013. Using the structure of tarot and its enduring archetypes, the project examines Northern Nevada through painting, lived experience, site-based research, water, land, memory, and witness.
The archetypes are universal. The stories are local.
THE HIGH PRIESTESS
trump II
Acrylic on canvas,
36 × 36 in
2023
This second High Priestess centers knowledge that survives through protection, lineage, and restraint. The image holds mother, child, water, and land in a single field of witness. It is about what must be protected in order to endure across time, bodies, and change.
Set near Pyramid Lake, the work does not claim authority over Indigenous knowledge. The land is treated as elder and witness, not as resource. This High Priestess is not secrecy for power. She is custody, continuity, and care.
THE EMPRESS
trump III
Acrylic and gold leaf on hardboard, 40 × 60 in
The Empress examines care, fertility, and nurture as forms of authority rather than automatic comfort. In this version, the archetype is not treated as unconditional refuge. She becomes a figure of discernment: what appears safe is not always capable of holding what is offered.
Grounded in lived experience, this card asks where we confuse symbols of care with actual care. It looks at the gap between authority and capacity, beauty and safety, witness and absence.
THE CHARIOT
trump vii
Acrylic and gold leaf on canvas,
36 × 36 in
2025
The Chariot is usually read as forward motion, victory, and control. In Reno Tarot, it becomes a study of momentum, endurance, and cost. The subject is grounded in real geography and personal history, replacing conquest with negotiation.
This card asks what we carry when we keep moving. It is about pace, pressure, survival, and the danger of calling momentum freedom when it may actually be avoidance.
THE STAR
trump xvii
Acrylic on canvas,
48 × 36 in
2026
The Star is the card of aftermath, repair, and quiet orientation. In Reno Tarot, it is not spectacle, rescue, or sudden transcendence. It is the moment after the noise drops out, when the body is still here and the world has not ended.
Built from Donner Lake, this card lets the landscape carry the archetype. Water becomes the structure: arrive, settle, reflect, move on. The Star holds a kind of hope that does not perform. It simply remains.
THE WHEEL
trump x
Acrylic on canvas,
48 × 36 in
2026
The Wheel is not luck. It is pattern, recurrence, interruption, instinct, relationship, weather, body, system, and return. In Reno Tarot, the wheel turns through layered rings of experience: origin, body, reaction, interruption, relationship, environment, and larger forces that keep moving whether or not we understand them.
The Truckee Meadows basin and its weather are not background here. They are part of the mechanism. This card asks what keeps repeating, what keeps turning, and what only changes after enough pressure becomes visible.
THE EMPEROR
trump iv
Acrylic on canvas,
18 × 36 in
2023
The Emperor is the card of structure, authority, protection, lineage, and order. In Reno Tarot, that authority is not treated as simple villainy or simple strength. This Emperor is competent, functional, intelligent, and respected, but his power is shaped by distance, containment, and control.
The glass crown suggests authority that appears intact while remaining fragile. The rose points toward secrecy, inheritance, and the idea that silence can be mistaken for protection. The Truckee River anchors the figure in place and movement, reminding us that land and history move through people, even when they believe they are the ones shaping the world.
This card asks what happens when order survives longer than honesty. It looks at protection without intimacy, structure without transparency, and the cost of maintaining control when truth has been pushed underground.
