I'm Anna Fox Ryan. I'm a longtime artist and explorer.
I live with a rich curiosity about how we relate to ourselves, each other and the worlds around us.
For over 15 years my art has documented the many expressions of personal power and power structures in relationships. As I synthesize my research and review my image archives, I also witness a world in need. In recent years I have redesigned my methods of creating, so that my art can be of greater service. I now focus on relational education through the arts. Whether I'm making art solo, or with others, or featuring a teaching inspired by another creator — I'm interested in expanding our collective experience of right relationship through the many lenses of expression and potential.
This is the Right Relationship Project.
The phrasing of right relationship stems from ancient spiritual contexts including Buddhism and indigenous lineages of energy medicine, with my specific reference being to Q'ero shamanism of Peru and their guiding concept of Ayni. I am part of each of these lineages by training and initiations, but I acknowledge that I am not of their blood line. I understand my role as a bridge and an amplifier in service of a better world.
To be in right relationship with the term I must own my position with it. I am a white integral-gender person raised through an ancestral line and culture rooted in colonial idealism. This means I was trained to tame my wild, stifle my inner guy, and over-give of my feminine expression — lest I be inappropriate, scandalous, slutty, unbecoming, too much, etc.. As a young rebellious artist, struggling with belonging inside and out, the word right was the enemy — a static concept of what is allowed by a judging Other, barring all creative options that might render a different, better, more interesting, more enjoyable, innovative, novel or personal approach.
This reclamation is an invocation of root-purpose and intention. Instead of auto-pilot or sleep walking through the same old ways, we have a chance to invigorate our curiosity. We can ask why, what, how and more. We can even get curious about our own limitations and motivate our invitation to others; do they sense or see a way forward that we just haven't noticed yet?
A Right Relationship is one of alignment, harmony, flow and grand design.
What feels right?
The nervous system will guide through opening the body, subtle expansion and relaxation of body, heart, mind, emotions and freedom to move forward. The opposite is contraction, closure tension, nausea.
What are the ways I feelconnected or separate within myself, or with others, environments, resources, money, visions and onward? What feelings prompt the right level of engagement that will not only serve myself but the greater whole (notably different from serving everyone, but rather considering different expressions of wholeness as their own breathing entities.)
In Right Relationship all parties are seen in their power, allowed their power and celebrated for the ways they contribute their unique power to the whole. One who has little power is still granted right to life. Right Relationship celebrates benevolent authenticity, equanimous power, rich compassion, sensuous creativity and clear presence.
Right isn't an externally sourced concept that controls right or wrong. Right is a feeling you get to search for. As you open the super power of your sensitivity and feel into your body, mind, emotions, and energy notice when and why you feel fulfillment, or a simultaneous giving and receiving in any moment. This is a merger, integration of masculine and feminine energy.
Right Relationship is a way of living in collaboration with the earth, stars, all parts of the self, and everything beyond. Everything in its right place in the constellation, garden, or system of the many that make up one beautifully interconnected whole ecosystem from the cellular to the cosmic.
This site holds my Gallery page as a view of my past, and The Right Relationship Project (RRP) as a fresh ground for my future explorations. You can also explore practical and philosophical Articles on the art forms of Right Relating.
This is how I begin to serve and facilitate helpful change.
My vision is that this site serves as a space to dive a little deeper in our exploration of what right relationship means personally, environmentally and relationally. I'm grateful for this chance to inspire, inform, and get curious with others through art, in service of a greater good.