Astrid Fitzgerald is an internationally recognized artist, known for her harmonious and balanced work-paintings, prints, constructions, works in encaustics and pastels, and works on paper in acrylic, charcoal, and casein-appealing both to the mind and the emotions and often based on Golden Mean proportions. She is also the editor of An Artists Book of Inspiration, a collection of thoughts on the creative process drawn from various traditions, times, and places, and the author of Being Consciousness Bliss, a drawing together of the perennial wisdom of the ages, recognizable in all spiritual traditions, plus insightful explanations of practices leading to its fulfillment in everyday experience.

We are very happy to welcome Astrid to our site and invite you to learn more about her books and enjoy her artwork at her own website: www.astridfitzgerald.com

Toinette Lippe had a long and distinguished career in publishing, as both editor and reprint rights director at Alfred A. Knopf. In 1989 she founded the imprint Bell Tower especially for "spiritually useful" books of all traditions. She is the author of Nothing Left Over, a memoir about living life with joy and passion while divesting oneself of material and mental clutter, and Caught in the Act, a book halfway between essay and journal that offers insights into Toinette's own journey of becoming aware of the inner and outer worlds and not identifying with thoughts, events, and situations, which are always changing. 

Toinette is an avid gardener, as can be appreciated when one walks by the small, exquisite section of the community garden in Riverside Park, New York City that she lovingly and carefully tends. Her appreciation of flowers is also seen in her brush paintings, some of which have been included here as "Toinette's Garden." East Asian brush painting aims to capture in a few vibrant brushstrokes the essence of the artist's observation, using water colors, sumi-e ink, brushes of rabbit, badger, and horse hair, and thin porous "rice" paper (which is not actually made from rice but other fibers).

Bell Tower (an imprint of Harmony Books) publishes teachings from many sacred traditions-books that nourish the soul, illuminate the mind, and speak directly to the heart. They are listed at: http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/bell_tower/

We are very happy to welcome Toinette and her work, both as editor and as painter, to this site. You may wish to check out her brand new website at: www.toinettelippe.com