enjoying the land..

well,  despite my good intentions its been a while..   I've been busy with shamanic work - doing journeys to ask for help for people, which I love doing. 

Also I am on a roll with new paintings and they take a lot of time & energy. The way I am working is slow,  building more abstract ones this time,  with shapes taken from drawing out in our fields,  then spending a long time mixing colours so that they will work well together.. serious play.. And once again being guided by my Spirits.  Sometimes I don't know where its going & its another nervewracking excercise in TRUST !!

The paintings  I have posted above are from a while ago, & work with those same principles really. They are contemporary with the 1st one I posted up in June.  After that 1st image came from journeying with my Spirit Helpers,  I did loads more, filled a sketchbook & then many of them became full paintings.  A group of them, like those above, are quite small - 8 by 10 inches in old money - like chips off the original experience & image..

Something I haven't even mentioned here is my lifelong love of many kinds of music. I play CD's a lot when in my studio.  Today Bach's B Minor mass came to mind & I listened to the whole thing while painting.  My Shamanic path is about surrendering my gifts to Spirit  to be used to speak out in the world , & my current paintings are a celebration of this land.  I felt buoyed up by the beauty of Bach's music & his text about spirituality, death & life.  I'm not a christian, but I feel that Bach's faith was so true that  his music resonates with the beauty & pain we all know on our different spiritual paths ,  beyond the limits of his religion .

ABUNDANCE - Don't forget to PLAY !

Sometimes I do lots of monoprint drawings in quick succession,  which always takes me somewhere unexpected.  This one is called ABUNDANCE & was the final one in such a series. For printing like this I ink up a board with oil paint with a roller, & lay a piece of paper over it, & draw mostly with my hands.  When I peel the paper off, the image is the other way round, a mirror version.  This figure is a goddess of abundance, with her 2 pairs of hands showering fruit & flowers, stars, birds & the moon..   I wasn't in a happy place at all when I started drawing,  but doing a series without stopping to look or think much, allows change to come in,  & this image was a joyful surprise at the end.  Time to say thank you!

This Tree watches me..

When I sit at my laptop at my kitchen table,  and look up out of the window,  this Tree is directly in my line of view.  Of course it doesn't look like this now,  in July,  I took this photo last winter.  I immediately see a face in it,  a stern, older face;  & even now when She  (as I think of her)  is hidden in waving summer leaves,  I am aware of that strong structure inside.

She reminds me to have respect for the Tree People.  

I am lucky to live in a very lush part of SW Wales with many beautiful Trees,  many species grow well in this damp climate. Everything is growing like crazy at the moment. This morning I strimmed the grass on the flat area behind our barn where I like to do Chi Kung outside - there's not much flat ground here - and it was a joy to perform those ancient meditative movements there in late in the afternoon in  intermittent sunshine, looking across the grass we leave long,  full of 'weeds', wildflowers,  butterflies & bees.  My brain was tired after a stretch of concentrated studio time, for which being out on the land is the perfect antidote.   Also its where the paintings come from in the 1st place,  so I also do my Chi Kung in gratitude to the Spirits for the paintings I am working on now,  which are directly related to this land , but too new to show here yet.  I have plenty more to put up here though, so I wont leave such a long gap till my next post.