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Here are some photos I have taken at various time & places over the last year or so, all at moments where my attention was caught by colour, or texture, or both . I was simply going to share the most recent one, but when I look back I realise how regularly this happens, & I'm interested to put some side by side & see them as a group.
These moments of joy in seeing some particular combination of random things feeds my painting practice. When I am working on a painting & looking/feeling for the combination of colours that will , I hope, make each other sing, things such as these are feeding me. It is an unconscious source of support - I don't deliberately seek to copy nature's colours, that has never worked for me. Sometimes I will only see the connection from a painting or drawing back to a photo afterwards. I think my Spirit Helpers have this sorted ...
These 5 shots are taken in some of my favourite landscapes - S Wales, N Wales, & Scotland. I feel so glad to be able to spend time in these places,
I hope these convey something of their mixture of ancient presence & fragile beauty.
Haven't posted for a while so here is one thing I am busy with .. and big thanks to Nick Breeze Wood for turning my idea into this lovely poster/flyer image. If any of you out there are in London in November please come & have a look.
My Spirits gave me the title for this painting before I started it, which is a first for me. It illustrates an experience I had on a shamanic journey when my spirit helpers were showing me how their energy connects to mine - or your spirit helpers' energy to you..
I saw the human energy body as a floating empty space being filled with spirit power - each spirit helper shows itself to us in a way we can understand, in a form like bird, or animal or stone or flower, and this energy is connected to the human energy body by lines or threads or light paths of energy. We each have many helpers as I have shown in the painting, including sun, moon & stars.
The 3 triangle shapes behind the human shape remind me of the 3 worlds of shamanism, upper, middle and lower - or the 3 realms of my chi kung practice, heaven, human & earth - or 3 power centres in the human body, in the head, the heart & the belly.
Also they refer to the Sri Yantra - the beautiful 2000 year old tantric image made of 9 interlaced triangles.
Before the British Library moved to its present site it was part of the British Museum, and there was a small Sri Yantra image on display there which I used to go & spend time with every time I went to the museum. The geometry of it was riveting, & calming & satisfying..
I had no idea when I began this painting that all these elements would come together. Indeed I thought this painting was a personal one, and its journey to completion has been quite a long one.
Just recently I got the message that it was meant to go out in the world too - so I hope it feeds you as much as it does me.
The next of these paintings from the land here has come in quite fast.
The initial drawing on canvas in the particular place took place in Spring, & then the non-summer weather after that meant I didn't go back there many times during the making of the painting, which is a change.
It had a very lively energy right from the beginning, and once again, I worked in acrylics, and enjoyed finding new ways to make marks & build layers. All my paintings are spirit-led, but this one stretched my trust to new heights. Put that colour there ? Really ? OK.
And then the Bird appeared, which was totally unexpected, and off we went somewhere new.
When I finish one of these paintings I make a shamanic journey to take the painting to the place & thank the Spirits there, who gave me the painting. This experience was deep & joyful this time. And yesterday I walked round the land again & the next painting is already on the way. Things seem to be accelerating !!
I would like to thank all my fellow participants in the annual International Shamanic Community summer gathering earlier this month, because all the dancing & interaction with the Spirits of the Land there definitely helped me trust & follow my Spirit Helpers to create this painting.
It occurs to me looking back at my posts that I only put relatively small files of my paintings up here, which makes them appear smaller than the ipad work - not true !! just convenient.
You will just have to come & see the real thing some day.. either here in SW Wales, or perhaps when I have an exhibition in London in November.. of which more nearer the time, but let me know if you want to have more info please.
This one is an oil painting which has taken time to appear in my studio. It got quite stuck for a while, an I only found the way forward by drawing several more versions on my ipad, the last of which I will add below.
I have done several images with labyrinths in over recent years - its a series I add to sporadically - some of them are in the archive section on this blog.
I always find walking the labyrinth magical & focussing both as a meditation, & as a ceremony for a specific purpose / ocaision.
In this painting the way the labyrinth changes the view makes me think of seeing differently as I sometimes do when guided by my Spirits. Different ways of seeing...
Here is the ipad version -
Whilst working on paintings take time, the flowers in our garden seem to whizz through flower to seed in our very changeable & unseasonably cool weather. Still I would like to share a few beauties..
This 1st is a peony bloom from a few weeks ago - a plant my Mum subdivided from an old one at the house where I grew up, north of London. It then lived at Mum's next home nearby for some years. Then it came here to such a different climate about 3 years ago. It just survived 2 very hard winters, & after this last milder one has given us a first flower since its arrival, which felt even more epic when Mum told me it was possibly planted by my great-grandmother ! Praise to the tenacity of this beautiful plant which has felt able to flower again at last ...
The other is a poppy - we have not had success with these either til this year - & I feel that this is the first year that we really have a proper garden, & the Spirits of the place have settled after all the changes after we moved here. Thank you to all who have helped us reach this point, both human friends & Spirit helpers...
I think this poppy's shapes & colours are so fabulous at every stage of its growth :-)
I took this photo a few years ago , its of part of our pond. I like the way it has become its own surreal world in the image. I just found it again, & it occurs to me that it follows on well from my previous post. How many layers are there here ??? How many worlds ???
It makes me think of the layers of the 3 worlds shamans have walked in for longer than we know...
Its good to let our awareness keep expanding...
