A Year of Happenings

To paint an image, or write a story or poem, is to make inchoate ideas or unnameable feelings into tangible realities, to turn them into happenings in my life. 

To create works of art is to prove that however small life with chronic illness may be, there is an unfathomable largeness at the centre of it, from which wonders can emerge, if I allow belief to triumph over doubt.

By making art I circumnavigate that core largeness, not always knowing how to make contact with it, and not brave enough (yet) to enter it wholly, but often siphoning some gift from the depths, some vision from Source that feeds me in ways I do not understand, yet know are vital. Though while my soul is nourished by this work, the hunger always returns, which keeps me continually seeking a way inside, to see what more I can find.

To touch and converse with the largeness I know I must nurture a discipline of withness,* though it seems impossible right now, except perhaps in small, blessed moments. My capacity to receive, to engage, to participate fully, is impaired and diminished. But I do aspire to the discipline—to be a follower–partaker–knower of life’s rhythms—and hope that my heart-mind finds its way back to the experience of connection and possibility I have known before. 

One day, perhaps, I will fall unexpectedly back into grace, and dwell there for a time, where I will make the art I need to make to bring magic back into the world. 

*

The beginnings of the above thoughts came to me one night recently when I couldn't sleep, and they seemed a good way to end this turbulent, uncertain and testing year. 

I feel as if I have made less art, though that isn’t actually true, as I’ve made two more pieces than I did last year. I am, however, less satisfied with a few images, whilst also delighting in the fact that my work is becoming more visually complex, and thus more difficult to create. My problem-solving skills have been put to good use many a time, and I am rising to the challenge of drawing tricky things.

I have also learnt to sew, and have so far made three tops, a skirt and a dress, with more projects in planning, whilst continuing with knitting—including the Deer with Little Antlers Hat by Tiny Owl Knits for my niece! So once more I have achieved more than I realise.

Here are some of my favourite paintings from the year that was:

Matrix

Beneath the Mountain

Our Lady of the Stars

Our Lady of the Seeds

Mundus

Sacred Mountain

There are some exciting things afoot for 2021, so I’m going to devote myself to studio time as much as I can this summer (which hopefully will be much easier to do than it was last summer).

Thank you to all my readers and new followers for accompanying me on my creative journey, and to the people in the US and France who bought some of my work on Redbubble. I will be putting my modest earnings towards art supplies. 

  

Summer/Winter Solstice greetings, and Happy Holidays, however you may or may not celebrate them.

* ‘… a discipline of withness—of seasonal rhythm, of internal bodily rhythm and cyclicity …’ (Monica Sjöö & Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, Harper One: New York, 1987/1991, p. 326)

The Wild Nun: The Divinest Sense / At the Core

This broken world is overwhelming to body-mind, to spirit. 

How is anyone supposed to cope? 

Most importantly, how are the sensitive ones to cope? How do we survive, healthy, with sanity intact? 

Perhaps it is not possible. Perhaps the challenge is to live, unhealthy and with ‘the divinest sense’ of insanity, and to function despite that. To express the dis-ease, the madness, the passion that will not be silenced for it speaks for life, and all that is being lost, profaned, poisoned.

Pasque flower, photographed at the Everglades Historic House and Garden, Leura (October 2016)

*

If you strip everything away — your identity, culture, self-perceptions, likes and dislikes — what is left?

Is there a core of love, kindness, contentedness? Or a core of hurts, regrets, sadnesses?

If the former, consider yourself truly blessed. If the latter, how can you heal and transform that core of yourself into something truly worthy?

I am not afraid to say that I am negotiating with my own hurts, regrets, and sadnesses, trying to move towards them with a gentle curiosity. It’s not easy, and I don’t really know how to do it, but what else can a living being do other than keep trying to move towards betterment?

I think that most of us are hurt in some way, wounded by the brutality of so-called ‘civilised life’, and all the little and large traumas — not just those we endure personally, but also those passed down, from generation to generation. 

We did not evolve to live like this.

So let’s be gentle with ourselves, and each other, for most of us are doing the best we can. And let’s begin to work towards healing one hurt at a time — stitching up, salving, singing over them — until our core selves become what they were always meant to be.

Rockrose (November 2020)

Words and images from my Instagram project @the_wild_nun

Our Lady of the Sea

Now there are three: 

Sky 

Earth 

and Sea

Our Lady of the Sea, watercolours, gouache and acrylic paint on gesso prepared paper (2020)

In the Blue Sky of the Red Mother

Gleaning words from old writing, I came across the title of this painting.

I wanted to know who the Red Mother was, what she looked like, and what the significance of her blue sky was. 

This is what I found out:

The sky is an emanation of her.

She is like the sunset, red with that burning light.

She is the full moon, pregnant with the sun’s light.

She creates the serenity of the sky from her being.

In the Blue Sky of the Red Mother, watercolours and gouache on gesso prepared paper (2020)

The Wild Nun: The Path of Illness

For a few short years I thought I knew the path I was walking. 

Now, that time of grace long gone, the way is not so clear. 

I keep walking anyway. 

* 

Every now and then there appear bright spots in the gloom, gifts from Source that bloom into being, and my wellspring fills and then overflows. 

These blessed moments nourish my dark depths during spells of creative and spiritual drought, those unavoidable elements of the climate of chronic illness.

 

Waratahs in the mist

Words and images from my Instagram project @the_wild_nun

The Wild Nun: Foundations

I am starting slowly, from a low-to-the-ground place.

*

The future grows from the ground of the past —

The past is mother to the future, to possibility, while it holds us steadily, solidly, in the present —

It is the foundation that cannot be denied —

Only honoured and shown gratitude for the many lessons that push us onwards towards ourselves.

Tree, Merrion Square Park, Dublin, July 2005

*

If it is the journey and not the destination, then it is the longing and not the attainment.

I must tend to my longings, feed them, encourage them to grow from the ground of my being, so in turn they nourish me.

*

It’s not easy being a late-bloomer, often a complete non-bloomer, and occasionally dying right back down to the roots to spend time hidden and safe in the underworld, to get some good old composting done before the next furtive emergence.

The world is not always understanding of such changeability, of an adherence to inner seasons that cannot be tamed and forced into production on demand.

It’s not easy but I can’t be rushed. I have to take my own sweet time dancing with the invisible.

Words and images from my Instagram project @the_wild_nun

Sacred Mountain

I’ve been playing with this idea for the past month, and being constantly frustrated in my attempts to bring it into being. I wanted to get it right, to have it be what it cannot help but be, and avoid starting paintings I couldn’t bring to fruition. My energy is limited, thus I wanted to get from beginning to end with as little twists in the road as possible.

I tried drawing slightly different designs, adding or subtracting details, and pondering colours or a lack of them. Yet nothing seemed right, the image thwarting my efforts to define it once and for all.

The lack of progress* (a word I hate, but I’ll leave it there) was causing me to fall into an all too familiar mindset: 

The why bother? perspective. 

The my work is not so important point of view. 

The it’s all too hard stance.

It’s a good thing I’m stubborn, and that feelings do change. I decided that enough was enough and just got started, simplifying the image to its bare essentials, and reducing the size. 

It’s not entirely as I wished it to be, but I feel the elements I left out are not yet ready to manifest themselves, and I respect that. They will feed future work.

And I need to remember to be brave, to just play and explore. That I can, and must, silence the perfectionist voice and be content with whatever emerges.

The main inspiration came from this quote:

… Silbury Hill in Wiltshire is an immense conical mound, dating from Stone Age times, that resembles a birth-cone. Sacred mountains in general are of this form, with the tip missing, which is supposed to be the place where the earthly meets the other world. This can have a literal meaning is one takes the ‘other world’ to be the place where everyone was grown through the stages of gestation, up from the single cell through the animal series to the human baby. Everyone is then born through the birth-cone, or ‘axis of the universe’. In the emblems the sacred mountain is accompanied by a world tree haunted by serpents, and a spring of water. The shaman may climb such a tree to meet the gods … (Penelope Shuttle & Peter Redgrove, The Wise Wound: Menstruation & Everywoman, 1978/1986, p. 180)

This image, I hope, contains both mountain and world tree; a spine-like fissure as the axis of the universe; and the marriage of earth with water/rain.

*A better alternative would be process.

Sacred Mountain, ink and felt tip pen (2020)

Let There Be Darkness!

In gleaning words from old notebooks recently I came across an intriguing little tale I wrote at writers’ group way back in June 2017, using the prompt: In the sky there were no stars.

Seeing as the need for more generative darkness to counteract the distinct unenlightenment of our light-addicted culture has been an idea close to my heart for some time (see Endarkenment), I thought I would, after some extensive editing, share this story as one of possibility.

I preface it with this thought from a book I highly recommend:

Let there be darkness. 

The last truly revolutionary act left to human beings in the twenty-first century is to turn out the lights. Other acts are possible—acts we may call revolutionary—but they do not meet the criteria of the word as it must necessarily be interpreted today. Nothing short of turning out the lights will lead to an overturning of the endgame global system that now has us in its thrall. 

~ Clark Strand, Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age, 2015, pp. 50–51

*

In The Sky There Are No Stars

In the sky there are no stars. Even the moon is dimmed to invisibility by the ubiquitous light which forces its way up and down and sideways into every alleyway, every crevice, every potential shadow. 

My grandmother told me about the stars. She said they were like tiny pinpricks of light shining through a dark blanket, but I struggled to imagine them, for I knew only light and could not picture dark. 

Darkness is banished. Darkness almost never was. Everything is white, bright, glaring. Even at night, light intrudes, piercing through the window, so that we are never free of it. When we sleep it passes through our eyelids and enters our dreams. We have no peace.

I say we, but wonder sometimes if others think as I do, or if it is only me. 

Everyone is told, from the moment we begin to understand words, that it is the light that sustains us, that all that matters is its radiance. We are told to shun shadows, and never—but never!—to leave the safe confines of the constantly floodlit city, barricaded by a high white wall. We are told that on the other side there is nothing, and with light blinding our eyes we cannot see beyond at all. 

Though how is it possible that the world ends on the other side of a wall? And has anyone seen past it?

Such thoughts are dangerous, and I’ve been clipped round the ears more than once for staring into space, for imagining, for daring to contradict what I have been taught. Why should I even think of what is beyond the light? And why should such a word as escape come to mind? What do I need to escape from? Don’t we have all we need here in the City of Light?

It’s hard to explain these blasphemous thoughts. I want to call them dark, but since I don’t know what dark is, I can’t be sure of that word’s accuracy. Still, they remain in my mind, unknown ideas, impossible speculations, and I can’t shift them. 

I decided I had to try to find the darkness, for I believe what my grandmother told me about the stars: that they are still there, always there, behind the light.

Though in an eternally lit place where eyes can always see, it is not so easy to keep secrets, to do things undetected, but I made what preparations I could. I clothed myself in white, camouflaged myself with the only world I knew. I crept soundlessly and unseen to the foot of the wall, and began to climb the rough whitewashed stones. Perhaps they never expected anyone to try it, perhaps it had always been this easy. I pulled myself to the top, and over, and jumped down to the strange, unlighted earth on the other side. 

Now I was finally beyond all sight, free to discover the dark, to find and uncover the shrouded stars.

An illustration by Will Lytle, from Waking Up to The Dark

The Wild Nun: Committing to Patience

I want to want to do the things I want to do

I trust that my longing will eventually become stronger than my apathy

I commit myself to patience in the meantime

I will wait

Wisteria in bloom at the Norman Lindsay Gallery, October 2018 

Words and image from my Instagram project @the_wild_nun

The Wild Nun: Life~Death~Life

We are not really living unless we are periodically dying.

*

… metabolism means: I subsist on what becomes my body, and I exhale into the air what was my body. I am the grain of the field that died for me, and I die constantly and transform myself into what the plants inhale, such that my body becomes their new bodies. The organism is a closed being, and at the same time matter flows through it. Matter drifts through the bodies of a vast array of organisms without ever being identical with them. A carbon atom in the calm grasses of the meadow was once a part of the air, and before that an insect, fruit, perhaps a human body, its breath, perhaps me. 

(Andreas Weber, Matter & Desire: An Erotic Ecology, Chelsea Green Publishing: White River Junction, Vermont, 2017, p. 57)

Words and image from my Instagram project @the_wild_nun

Greeting the Wild Nun

Dear readers, I seem to be becoming more and more quiet in this space. Life seems to be getting the better of me, and I am struggling to find not only the energy to make art, but also the motivation. I don’t lack ideas—in fact, I have far too many!—but I do lack impetus and focus. 

This is the ongoing challenge of living with a chronic illness: traversing the difficult times with as much grace a possible, and then beginning again, again, again.

So, in an attempt to redirect my attention and energies back towards what is nourishing and restorative, and away from detrimental distractions, I have made a decision to take an extended break from social media. Mostly this means Facebook, which I intend to avoid for the next month (though potentially much longer). The only exception will be to share anything I publish here. 

I will also probably be posting less often on my Instagram account: @offeringsfromthewellspring

By consciously avoiding the worst of the online world, I hope I will be drawn back towards what I need: nature, sunshine, beauty, myth, making, and healing work in my studio.

However, wisely or otherwise, I have created a sister account on Instagram to explore a new creative project, an alter ego of mine: @the_wild_nun

I intend to share most of what I post in the voice of this new persona here, but do come and follow her journey on Instagram if you feel so inclined. She’s an hermitic creature, much like the Solitary Woman of a story I once wrote; but she does like some company from time to time. 

And so I, she, begins …

*

My unknowing is both shameful and a place of beginnings.

It is only by journeying into the darkness that I will find my way. I can no longer shy from my uglinesses, my weaknesses, my flaws, or the hidden things that scare me. I need to dive down deep into myself, to find a passage through the underworld, and then back to the surface.

The Wild Nun is me and not me; she tells all the truth but tells it slant. She is a dweller of two worlds: upper and lower, inner and outer, conscious and unconscious. She bridges the gap between, and sees in the dark, unearthing treasures.

When I cannot speak as myself, I will speak through her. When illness, fatigue and depression silence me, I will use her voice, create with her hands and heart.

Her name is Veejma, the phonetic spelling of the Polish word wiedźma, meaning witch, hag, harridan (source: Max Dashu, Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, 700–1100).

I am taking the Wild Nun’s hand and letting her lead me into the underworld where radical healing is found. A new journey is beginning, a new twist in the path, a new shadowy entrance into myself.

Detail of my painting Rainmaker (filter added)

The Marriage of Joy & Sorrow: A Poem

                            joy exists 

on the sheer edge 

of sorrow 

at any moment 

ready 

to stumble into 

its dark embrace 

into a strange marriage 

in which each vows 

to be the ground 

and being 

of the other

forever wed 

and devoted 

to life

(June/August 2020)

Wise Words: The Artist

… an artist is not, in essence, a virtuoso. An oeuvre can hold our attention and move us only to the extent that we perceive in it a response to a spiritual and emotional necessity. The artist seeks to compensate for some deep-rooted sense of lack which causes acute discomfort. Impelled by an existential unease whose nature is not our concern, he or she surpasses others despite feeling bereft of something which they apparently take for granted. “What distinguishes the artist from the dilettante”, [Odilon] Redon observed, “is simply the pain experienced by the former. The dilettante looks to art only for his pleasure.”

(Michael Gibson, Odilon Redon: 1840–1916 – The Prince of Dreams, Taschen: Köln, 2011, p. 8)

Odilon Redon – Reflection, pastel (1900–1905) 
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Mundus

I have a poetic sensibility such that I find certain words and phrases to be highly evocative, and I often wish that I could create an artwork, poem or story to illustrate them. Such was the case with mundus, which in Latin means ‘world,’ though it is also an origin of the word ‘mound’ (the Middle English form of which—‘mounde’—also meant ‘world’). 

The word came to my attention in Barbara C. Walker’s Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets as related to the Greek abaton, a subterranean ‘pit’ in pagan temples which people entered ‘to “incubate,” or to sleep overnight in magical imitation of the incubatory sleep of the womb …’ (p. 2). The ‘incubus’ or spirit who visited people in their dark, underworld sleep brought dreams that would afterwards be interpreted for healing or prophesy.

The abaton was the human-made equivalent of the natural caves and crevices that people originally saw as the womb(s) of Mother Earth. Megalithic tombs and barrow-mounds were built upon the same principle—the mound representing the pregnant belly of the Goddess, where the dead could be laid to rest in preparation for rebirth. In the Neolithic period both temples and tombs were often built in the shape of the belly or whole body of the Goddess. Thus we have ‘womb-temples’ and ‘womb-tombs’. Walker even states that ‘tomb’ and ‘womb’ are linguistically related (p. 1092), and that mundus meant both ‘earth’ and ‘womb’ (p. 154), though I am not entirely sure if this is etymologically correct. 

However, ‘tomb’ is certainly related to words that mean ‘earth-hill,’ such as the Latin tumulus, which may also have links to a proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘to swell’—just like a pregnant belly—and so it does bring us full circle back to the womb, and the mound, once more.

So, in my mind at least, I can connect these words thusly:

mundus

mound

tomb

womb

world

As is often the case with my work, the inspiration for the image itself came from a number of sources, most notably the circles within an arch in The Alchemist by Rima Staines, a print of which I recently framed. (She reminds me that the creative process is indeed an alchemical one.) 

Rima Staines – The Alchemist (2012)

I also referred to a number of images by the late Meinrad Craighead, whose enigmatic work is frequently provoking new visions. Sacred Hearts, a core influence for Our Lady of the Seeds, with mound-body, moon and orbs, is still haunting me; and the broad-featured face is loosely based on Hagia Sophia.

Sacred Hearts (1990)

Hagia Sophia (1987)

As I’ve been looking at a lot of prehistoric imagery over the past couple of years, the shapes and symbols of numerous menhirs, orthostats and petroglyphs have also seeped into my consciousness. 

I have even referenced my own art. The leaf- or flame-like shapes that sprout from the mound are the same as those in Fluency, which I described as ‘lines of connection, or emanations of energy—little jewels of life and sensation’. Here though, I can more definitely call them leaves, the topmost of which sprouts from the head of the figure, whose headwear started off more like the veils of a nun before elongating into a seed-like form. The vertical nature of it links the above world with the deep below—a recurring theme in my art.

It interests me how I keep returning to the same motifs: full and crescent moons, circles and mounds, triangles and vertical movement. I like the repetition and echo of forms, the circles within circles, the sacred geometry, one thing held within another.

It is not easy, and it can come so sporadically and with such difficulty that I am in constant dialogue with doubt. Yet I feel as if I am finally making the kind of art I always wanted to make.

I shall leave the last word to Marija Gimbutas: ‘Burial in the womb is analogous to a seed being planted in the earth, and it was therefore natural to expect new life to emerge from the old’ (The Language of the Goddess, p. 151).

Mundus, felt tip pen, ink, watercolour, gouache, gold acrylic and gold pen (2020)

Germinal

Mixed emotions are attached to this image. 

Germinal (a left-handed drawing)

I was initially going to call it Pit—in reference to a hole in the ground, or a grave; to a low psychological state; and to the hard stone of a fruit—but decided that overall the word was too bleak, not only for what is depicted, but also because no matter how difficult things get, how dark my shadowlands become, I always seem to sense hope’s glimmer somewhere.

When I am feeling gloomy I often feel unable to open myself to the creative process, and I avoid it, hide from it, feel unworthy. On this occasion though I felt it was necessary to push through my despondency and just do something, developing an old idea. 

In an attempt to bypass my inner critic and to embrace ‘mistakes’ I drew this with my left (non-favoured) hand, and the soothing repetition of all those spirals gave me something to focus on, calming my jangled nerves. (The ink highlights I completed with my right hand.)

It’s not my best work, but it speaks of my current mood, of a darkness that can still yield something good. To call it Germinal—in the earliest stage of development; providing material for future development—seems right.

Happy Imbolc! The light of spring is on its way.

Sleep

There is a serenity to my art that belies my reality. My inner self bears little resemblance to what I manifest in paint.

I would like to be able to express more of my shadow side through my images. Yet it is when I am feeling at my worst that I am least able to create, both energetically and emotionally.

The past couple of weeks have been difficult, and I have not been up to spending time in my studio, feeling no enthusiasm and seeing myself as unworthy of what might come into being there. But over the last few days I made myself look at a scribble from a few weeks back, and into an old sketch book, and by combining two ideas made this little image. 

Simple, serene sleep.

Sleep, watercolours and gouache on gesso prepared card (2020)

Waiting

It took quite an effort to create Our Lady of the Seeds, and I was rather overwhelmed by the response she received. Since then I’ve been waiting patiently for my next vision to capture my attention. I know it will arrive when it is ready. In the meantime I have been trying to keep busy, reworking an idea from last year into this little painting, and seeking new inspiration where it can be found.

Waiting, watercolours, gouache and metallic paint on gesso prepared card (2020)

Our Lady of the Seeds

When I said that Our Lady of the Stars (my previous painting) was showing me the way, I did not understand how precisely that was meant. She was a diversion from the work I had planned, painted simply to use up a piece of gesso-prepared paper coated in an inky blue—the remains of an abandoned attempt at painting Solitude. Yet I think I had to paint her to be able to finally manifest Our Lady of the Seeds.

The idea-seed for this painting was planted a little over a month ago by Meinrad Craighead’s work, Sacred Hearts, the form of which suggested this figure to me, buried beneath a mound of earth, only her hands protruding, with greenery sprouting from her fingers. 

Meinrad Craighead – Sacred Hearts (1990)

Though the pose, with arms raised and hands held palms forwards—often referred to as the gesture of invocation—came from an image of Hera which caught my attention in The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford (p. 312). This also gave me the design for the dress, decorated with square ‘fields’ with dots (perhaps seeds?) pricked into the middle of each one.

I also referred to this image of Thracian Kybele from Max Dashu’s visual presentation, Magna Mater / Isis of 10,000 Names. 

When I scribbled down my initial drawings I knew immediately who this figure was, and had some idea of how I wanted her to look, with a colour scheme very similar to Meinrad’s image—reddish brown earth and green-blue foliage emerging from darkness. Yet try as I might (with three seperate attempts!), I couldn’t get the paint to behave as I wanted it to. Whether this was due to my own lack of technique, or wayward materials, I can’t say. Probably a little of both. 

Yet the potency of the image was such that I knew I couldn’t just give up. So I decided to take an entirely different approach, simplifying it to a mixture of just two colours—ultramarine and burnt umber—laying a wash over freshly gessoed paper to create an initial symbolic (albeit invisible) link between the earth and the sky. 

The day after I applied the wash I read the first message of the nine-day Novena of Our Lady of Woodstock, and it inspired a sudden realisation: the sky and the earth are not separate—Our Lady of the Stars is Our Lady of the Seeds!

Sometimes I need reminding of the things I already know.

Our Lady of Woodstock said:

You believe that plants rely upon dirt for their life, but I tell you that the Dark is dirt. Darkness bears the seeds of the cosmos in Her womb, and out of those seeds—which you call stars—all things have their being and their life.

Stars and seeds are one and the same—stars seeding the cosmos, seeds seeding the earth; the dark of space and the dark of the soil the same Darkness, the same ultimate Source of Life.

Suddenly my painting had direction and I felt far more confident about what I needed to do. She emerged without too much incident or difficulty, though with a great deal of patience and attention to detail. She is not at all as I envisaged, but entirely different, entirely what she needed to be.

I feel that I may still return to this idea again at some stage, perhaps to make another attempt at manifesting her as I originally saw her. But for now I am just glad she has come through at all.

As with all of my art, she is available on Redbubble.

Our Lady of the Seeds, watercolour, gouache and gold acrylic on gesso prepared paper (2020)

Wise Words: Axis Mundi (The Union of Spiritual and Material Energies)

Making is a spiritual search. When the artist makes he or she is identified with the will of the spirit. But the artist is also identified with the will of the earth because the end of this spiritual search is to find and press the forms from his or her imagination into physical matter. Art is the union of spiritual and material energies.

(Meinrad Craighead, The Sign of the Tree: Meditations in Images & Words, Artists House: London, 1979, p. 164)

Axis Mundi, by Meinrad Craighead

She Knows: A Poem

she knows 

that she 

doesn’t know 

so maybe 

she is wise