The Mountain in My Mind

below –

an unseen 

flow 

Miraculous in how it has come into being through effortless effort, to soothe my frazzled nerves at a time of both inner and outer turmoil, this painting says precisely what needed to be wordlessly said.

I keep being drawn to depict this soaring yet grounded being with deep roots, as seen in earlier work, like Beneath the Mountain, which this image reprises.

Everything flows, and there is no straight path. 

As usual, it’s available on Redbubble.

The Mountain in My Mind, watercolours and gouache on gesso prepared paper, 2023

Promise: A Poem

when vitality is wanting
experience should be distilled
rich as honey
viscous and sweet
on the body’s tongue

life lingering —
before loss

for after arrives a brittle inertia
a thinness
that sleep cannot sate
and memory will not feed

alone, hollow
(even bitter)
we must patiently await
the return of a deep resonance
that promises
bees

An Update from the Rainy Days … Weeks … Months …

The Story of Illness

Oh, to find the energy!

To be able to embody it.

To be able to do the work I feel called to do.

To manifest my visions.

To be fed by them, and to feed in turn,

in an endless cycle of exchange, 

of gifting.

The energy will return, in time.

I trust myself to what will be.

To the story of illness I am living.

(2021–2022)

*

I was hoping to have posted something more here by now, but with the project that unexpectedly fell through (for the time being), and being unable to photograph a major knitting creation (due to the disorder of doing some redecorating), and not being able to work in my studio (due to said disorder), plus experiencing the malaise of yet another intensely wet and gloomy (and mouldy!) not-quite summer, combined with the cost to my energy of doing physiotherapy exercises every morning … well, you get the idea. 

I am also trying to read too many books (feminist literature is so enlivening!), despite my mind slipping over the meanings of words and struggling to comprehend what, at other times, I would absorb more easily.

But there are glimmerings, seeds being planted, ideas sparked. Images want to be manifested.

Soon, soon, I say. Your time will come.

I love the feeling of creativity beginning to burgeon, even if just hesitantly.

I’ve been thinking back over the past ten years, and all of the learning and growing I have done; and how the past five years have almost broken me, but how much further I have come despite the madness of the world and the pain of uncertainty. (I think I can be proud of who I am becoming.)

I cannot do my creative work right now. That’s just how it is. It’s frustrating, but it’s also okay.

I’ve missed summer—some warmth and sunshine before winter would be welcome—but I am sinking down into autumn, and all is well. 

This is the story of illness. My story. 

I hope there will be more to tell soon.

Summer blues, March 2022

Connecting with Cycles

This is a study made in preparation for a larger work, complete with wonky moons and spirals. But then, I am a bit wonky myself. 

Summer is not an easy season to move through, and my energy levels have been low, so it feels good just to complete something, however wobbly it is.

Progress in my studio is slow and sporadic at present, but there are ideas a-brewing. I have also set up an artist page on Facebook, to keep things a little more seperate from my personal profile. You can follow me there if you feel so inclined.

I don’t know precisely what I want to do with my art, seeing as illness keeps me regularly fluctuating between enthusiasm and apathy, but I think it is good to be taking tiny steps towards whatever growth and change may occur.

Connecting with Cycles, felt tip pen, ink and gold paint on paper (2021)

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

The Capacity to Receive

In my reading last year I took note of this quote from Susan Griffin, speaking of her experience of illness:

Tried to sit in the back. It usually restores me. The sun, the shade, those rare old deciduous pines. But I couldn’t do it. The illness damages something in my body, what one takes for granted, the capacity to receive. As if too much sound, movement, light were coming at me. I could not take it all in. (What Her Body Thought: A Journey into the Shadows, HarperSanFrancisco: New York, 1999, p. 296)

This idea of ‘the capacity to receive’ struck a nerve. It got me to thinking of how energy is required just to perceive the world, to take in stimuli, and for the body to be able to make sense of things and respond. Thus, with chronic illness and limited energy, when the body is just trying to maintain homeostasis, the world can simply be too much. Too much light, too much noise, too much movement and activity, too much colour and life.

I have continually written here about needing to be open and receptive, as if that is all there is to being creative, to living, to being able to function. If only I was open, if only I was receptive, I would be able to write, to make art, to enjoy life. But it’s not so simple. It never is when it comes to chronic illness. I am literally unable to receive. Something in my body has been damaged, or, at least, is not able to function right now. My senses are overwhelmed and exhausted. And without the energy to process stimuli, to let the world happen to me, the only thing to do is withdraw. 

The situation is made worse by the fact that summer in Australia has become an endurance event, which I had to drop out of months ago. I’ve been indoors mostly, which seems like such a waste, to be avoiding sun and heat and abundance, letting the high point of the year just pass by outside. Yet I feel I need to protect myself. 

I suppose I am aestivating, going dormant for a while. Though the word aestivation (essentially the summer equivalent of hibernation) carries connotations of hiding and harshness, unbearable heat and aridity. While I understand that a fiercely cold winter can be just as harsh as a hot summer, hibernation, in comparison, still makes me think of warmth and cosiness, inwardness and dreaming. Winter is the time of rest, slowing down and darkness, and is therefore somewhat easier on the senses. It’s not that I don’t like summer—or at least, I’d like to like it—but it’s becoming less and less bearable.

As I write this I am sitting in my studio looking out on a garden made suddenly lush and green by recent rain. It’s bursting at the seams, while I feel contained and distant. I’m not sure what to do about this state of things other than wait it out.

Happily, I haven’t been entirely idle. I’ve been learning to sew, and working on a small knitting project (when I cannot work on art I turn to other kinds of making), and I feel content with that for now. 

I’m trying not to ask too much of myself, for I cannot force my body to be open to what it is not capable of receiving. I’ll continue to aestivate, to keep myself safe from the too muchness of summer, while wondering: Is there an inwardness to aestivation? What kind of dreaming can summer bring?

Koala, Kangaroo Island, by Buiobuione (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Universe

Initially, I felt forlorn about this painting. It did not excite me like other images I have made this year, and a number of things went wrong paint-wise. Yet after sitting with her for a while—by which I mean ignoring her—I find I don’t dislike her quite so much. Mistakes aside, she’s not so bad after all. In a fallow time, creatively, she is at least something. Though if she is the universe, she is also everything.

Universe, watercolours and gouache on gesso prepared paper (2019)

A Dark Place: A Poem

I’ve done a lot of stream of consciousness writing over the last couple of months—most of it absolute drivel—but even when I think I can’t write, out comes something that has some meaning, and becomes a found or accidental poem. It may not be the best writing, and I do hope it’s not too self-pitying, but it is true writing, and so worth sharing.

I wish I had some words

wish I could write                   poetry 

something to make sense

of where I am

but I don’t have words

don’t have understanding          at all 

I can say nothing 

can put nothing down

and I read novels

these dystopian tales 

by women             and I think 

I will never write because

I will never be able 

to make sense of my thoughts 

like them                those brilliant women

will never have the imagination 

to write as they do

the courage to embrace ambiguity

to face such           difficult things

I guess I have been avoiding 

looking into the eyes 

of the death mother

even though I feel 

such an affinity 

with her

I keep wishing to 

return to the earth 

because I don’t know 

how to go on

yet I will change my thoughts 

when my energy changes

that’s what always happens 

and I become new 

and different

and it’s so stupid

that I am not                   myself

that I am more than one

that there are selves inside

and they come out 

at different times

I know 

this is just a mood

that will pass

I know

still there’s some truth 

in how I feel I feel         I feel 

I wish I felt more           and better 

knew when I was           distorting 

telling myself lies

I wish I understood

learned faster

was a better human being 

for a line I read in a book 

told how feeling terribly 

about yourself 

is just a kind 

of narcissism 

and so I really wish 

I could stop thinking 

about myself at all 

and just get on with life

but the problem is that 

I can’t do anything 

except this                   here

(and badly at that)

so all I think about 

is myself and my feelings 

a world of grief 

and I wish I could go  elsewhere 

be something               different 

new and reborn

transformed 

something 

anything

but I am stuck in          no woman’s land 

a dark place

the emptiest of     shadowlands

Fluency

I think I am beginning to develop some fluency after many, many years of struggling to manifest my ideas in visual form. I feel a greater trust in the process now.

This new painting developed out of a spontaneous drawing I did one afternoon, and then refined into a symmetrical design (symmetry seems to be essential to me at the moment). At first I thought she was a river spirit, flowing as she does. But as I explored further, the word fluency came to me and took on significance. 

The word dates from the early 17^th century, when it meant ‘abundance’, and then ‘smooth and easy flow’; originally from Latin fluentia, from fluere, meaning ‘to flow’.

The influence of water, and therefore fluidity, has been with me since the inception of this blog, seeing as its symbolism is so tied up with the drip/surge of creativity, with the offerings that I am attempting to draw up from my own imaginative wellspring to share with the world.

Thoughts of language and the way we use words and story have also been important, surfacing in poems like ‘A New Language’ and paintings like Necklace of Mouths and Mothertongue. It’s clear that we need to change the way we speak (and write), and I believe that poetry is a crucial part of this—and poetic art—along with listening to the voices of the ancestors, and the earth herself.

Meaningful words are still scarce for me, though some flow is beginning to return, which makes me very happy indeed. And the symbolic connections that I am finding in my images is also pleasing me greatly. 

This image of Aphrodite seated on a swan (or goose?) throne from 6^th century BCE Greece was a core influence, with her hooded, columnar form. 

This I combined with that quintessential Goddess number—three—in the triangles, and the tri-lines emerging from the mouth (already seen in Rainmaker and The Broad One). I was also thinking of the chin tattoos of three or more lines (or more elaborate designs) that appear in numerous cultures, often on women, whether to represent something in particular, or merely for the purpose of beautifying the face. 

The three lines of Fluency—language, nourishment, creativity—flow down the length of the (seed-like or cocoon-shaped?) body, the two outer lines snaking dynamically—because Snake is never far away—while the central line travels straight. Perhaps this represents the stillness at the centre, flanked by the double motion of life and death, ebb and flow. Also, the movement is downwards, as that is my preferred trajectory, back to earth- and body-knowledge, rooted in matter. 

Forget outer space, I say. Go within!

The carved orthostats of the Neolithic, with their repetitive curves and spirals, which I have always found mysteriously evocative, were also on my mind. It was only later that I remembered the painted or engraved figurines so common to Old Europe, their bodies covered in lines and symbols, and thought: Of course! How could I have forgotten?

Not all connections are immediately apparent. They emerge as my thoughts twist and turn and tread over old ground, and I am pleasantly surprised.

The leaf- or flame-like shapes that sprout from the surface of the figure are perhaps the part that comes most from myself. These are lines of connection, or emanations of energy—little jewels of life and sensation.

I am so happy with this painting. She is serene, yet holds dynamism within. She speaks with and through her body, which sparks with aliveness. She is her own wellspring.

Through the silent waves, what does she say?

Fluency, watercolours and gouache on gesso prepared paper (2019)

(Not) Being & (Not) Doing

Without the free flow of energy, nothing happens.

Summer brings many green and lovely gifts, yet I reluctantly have to admit that it simply doesn’t agree with me. Heat or no heat, there is something about this season that drains my energy (though it certainly has been very hot recently, which has made things much worse). I feel like I have been emptied out completely. 

Yet even when I am fatigued and lying in bed, I often can’t help reaching for my notebook and writing something about how I feel—however mundane and seemingly pointless. Because sometimes the words cause a shift in my mental state, or even in how energy is flowing in my body. It doesn’t always work; and usually any effects are very subtle, below consciousness. Yet it has become a habit that I can’t shake, this reaching for words, reaching for some kind of expression leading towards understanding.

With words I can defy my inner critic, and defy the powers that be that dictate how I should think and feel, and how I should even perceive and understand the world. I can defy my own sense of helplessness. This is a kind of healing magic.

It’s not working so well at present, though. I can’t seem to find many words, or the right ones. I can’t seem to push beyond where I am into new territory, which should bring me new impetus. Instead, I am having to surrender to what I am feeling, to tell myself that it is okay to not be writing, painting, reading (much), or working towards anything in particular. 

The past year brought with it many challenges and changes, and I suppose I am yet to integrate many of them. For my health and sanity, there is much that I have to face.

And I don’t know what this new year will bring. I have no specific plans. Perhaps I should lie low for a while, take a break from social media, find my bearings, and go in search of ‘real world’ nourishment.* So I may be a little quiet in this space for the time being, as I tend to my health-related and creative needs. For unless I take care of my wellspring, nothing creative will flow from it, and my life will wither away. I don’t want that to happen, for I know I have much to give—I just need the energy to be able to do that. 

When necessary (which is quite often at the moment), I am going to take Kat Duff’s advice: ‘a simple spiritual exercise for pulling ourselves back together and cultivating the self-possession of the masters [is] to collapse with exhaustion’ (The Alchemy of Illness, 1993, p. 32).

Of course, now that I have written this, probably ideas will begin flowing, and I will have things to post. Such is usually the way with me.** But I am trying very hard to let myself (not) be and (not) do whatever is necessary, in alignment with what I need, physically, emotionally, creatively. If work comes it comes; if it doesn’t it doesn’t. I can’t force the flow of energy, but must learn to work with it, however meagre it may be. If I take care to beckon it gently, humbly, then maybe, just maybe, it will grow.

In the end, it is process that is more important than product. I’m going to try to live the process for a while, and see where that leads. 

* This has been made a little easier over the past week because I’ve had little to no internet access—both very inconvenient and a blessing in disguise.

** True to form, I have indeed completed a new painting, which I will share in due course.