Beneath the Mountain

I think I was nine or ten when I began to become interested in image-making, and then I spent much time as a teenager ‘copying’ the works of artists I liked. (Those were the good old pre-Internet days when time existed in greater abundance and there were fewer distractions.)

Having CFS, I wasn’t well enough to study Fine Arts at uni, and in hindsight I was naive to think I could. I didn’t understand what art was, nor would the ‘student art community’ have been a suitable place for me. In the end I studied Art History instead—all theory and no practice. Again, I’m not sure if it was the best choice, but it did keep me busy for several years, and perhaps that was what I needed at the time. However, it meant that my art doings, already affected by illness, were relegated to the background of my life—to the holidays, and the rare occasions when I had a surge of energy and inspiration. 

And I still didn’t know what art really was. How it was made. What it meant. The power it could have.

Perhaps illness was partly to blame, as it has a tendency to blunt the senses and blur understanding. For me, at least. I dwelt only on the surface of life.

And perhaps family, school and culture didn’t give me the education I truly needed (not to apportion any specific blame—no one can teach what they don’t themselves know). I did stumble on certain ideas, read books from the library that I didn’t fully understand, that resonated with something deep within. Yet it wasn’t enough. I fell into forgetting, and what I needed to create got locked up inside—suppressed—hidden—buried.

I think I needed time. Time to be ready. Time enough to learn about what is from the right perspective (i.e. a non-western, ecological and ancient one). And time to let things brew.

Still, it feels like so much time has gone to waste when I could have been creating. And much is still suppressed. I’m just beginning to find my way.

I understand that there are seasons in life, and in the creative process: times of fruiting, times of fallowness, and times of filling up, in readiness to flower. But my journey is one of extremes, with low lows, when I doubt myself entirely, lose contact with Source, and feel bereft and lost. I sometimes have a great deal of trouble thinking of myself as an artist, taking myself seriously (when I am not being inappropriately grandiose). Likely this is normal for most creatives. We’re sensitive, prone to mood swings and uncertainty. 

Yet illness puts a different slant on things: the lack of energy limits activity; disturbed cognitive function limits understanding; disconnection and the inability to receive drives creativity underground, where it becomes inaccessible.

Life can be turned upside down and inside out when the heart is tired, and closes itself to the world.

Yes, creative urges do return, along with the energy to act on them. Yet I don’t know when they will come, or for how long.

I’m not in control.

This is as it should be, even if it makes things difficult, and painful. There is so much more that I need to learn from my life journey, from my body, from all of the hidden and buried things.

I don’t know if this image-making will ever form a part of my living. I was pondering whether to have some of my work professionally digitised, so I can have some good quality cards made. Maybe even giclée prints of a few of my best pieces. But during a global crisis is not a great time for such considerations. Nor do I feel comfortable going down that path—for my ability to make art may, like my ability to write, disappear at any time, with the unpredictable waxing and waning of my health. 

What’s more, my inner critic says, Is your work really good enough?—even as I try not to pay any attention.

I don’t know what will happen—to myself or the world (though I hope both world and I will learn from these strange times)—only that I must keep making images, whenever the desire to do so aligns with my bodymind’s capability. I must keep exploring the depths.

So I’ll just leave this mountain here. 

Beneath the Mountain, watercolours and gouache on gesso prepared card, 2020

Witchlines: Dancing The Labyrinth

Here is the second of my Witchlines pieces exploring the world of Minoan Crete—or Ariadnean Crete, as it should be. This prompt asked us to write about a ritual, involving bull, labyrinth, and sacred dance. 

Woman dancing in a circle (the centre figure holds a snake), clay figures, c. 1300 BCE, Heraklion Archaeological Museum
(Source: Wikimedia, by Jebulon)

Dancing the Labyrinth

Half-closed eyes under the round eye of the moon, under the gaze of the mountain, the shelter of the trees. Whirling, skirt unfurled, face upturned. The air heavy with poppy smoke, the scent of night, and the sweetness of the honey and wine we have offered to the earth.

Between us is a red thread, a sacred cord. Grasped in the hands of seven young women, led by Her—Most Holy, Most Pure—the Mistress of the Darkness, the spiralling ways, crowned with horns. We thread the air with circles. We weave ourselves in and out of time.

As we move like an eddy of water, a twist in the wind, night seems like day, rich with colour, and the moon’s light is an echo of the sun. 

This is a waking sleep.

From a part of myself that is aware, and still, I notice the great moon-beast, tethered to an olive tree. His hide seems to glisten in the moonlight, and his muzzle is wet and dripping. He snorts, stamps a hoof, tosses his head, dancing his own dance, resonating with a rhythm only he hears—ears flicking, muscles rippling. Garlanded with fragrant flowers, he smells sweetly of crocus and herbs.

I understand, now, the love held for this great bull, his pale hide and dark eyes. The blessing of his presence in this dance, to call forth what is yet to be born from the round belly of the earth, and what is to be born anew—the spark of energy that moves in and out of all things, always circling.

As we whirl we begin to feel it—a humming, a throbbing—an excitement in the air, an intoxication of life. Under our feet, we feel the earth inhale. 

The cord in our hands grows warm, sinuous as a serpent, and we thread it in a circle around the bull and the olive tree, tracing an ancient way that goes deep. We feel Her labyrinthine path beneath our bare feet, leading us onwards; we feel the labyrinth opening inside ourselves. The bull’s low bellow, and the tree’s movement in the night breeze incite us, and we move faster, faster, abandoning ourselves to Her will.

Suddenly, the Most Holy, Most Pure, She changes course, leads us inwards, ever closer to the bull; and we slow, open our eyes to see the beautiful horns reaching for the sky, the stars, drawing down the moonlight, calling in the light-in-darkness, the darkness-in-light. We touch the horns as we pass—blessing, being blessed—and the bull bows his massive head, lulled by the poppy smoke, gentled by night.

Then, eyes opened, and seeing anew—awakened fully—we orbit once more, spiralling out and away from the sweetly sleeping bull, our hair flying behind us, merging with the dark.

Below our feet, with a scent of honey and wine, the earth exhales.

White bull's head ritual rhyton, terracotta, from Gournia, 1600–1450 BCE, Heraklion Archaeological Museum

(Source: Wikimedia, by Jebulon) 

Witchlines: Ariadne Wakes

The second unit of Witchlines has been leading us into the wild places of myth, where, as Sylvia Linsteadt says, ‘we will attempt to unravel the weave of patriarchy from three old stories, and examine what we are left with—a luminous spool of gold extending back through the ages’.

The first tale we explored is that of Ariadne and the Minotaur, and here is my first creative piece. In it, Ariadne wakes on the island of Dia, and tells us what she remembers of the labyrinth, the Minotaur, Theseus, and Dionysus.

Ariadne Wakes

The salt-hiss of the sea. The scent of flowers. Cold skin cradled by sand, and unyielding stone; then warmed by the rising sun, and the touch of a hand that caresses my brow. I emerge from sleep.

I do not know where I am. I do not remember.

Only … the darkness, the torches. The laughter as the maidens and youths danced, stepping briskly, swaying and clapping. The young men taking the hands of the girls, sweeping them on, hands clasped, arms entwined, fingers touching fingers. Smiling faces on the verge of knowing. 

Inwards they circled, through the gloom of the deepening evening, all radiant in the firelight—heads garlanded with leaves and flowers, bodies lithe and moonlit. The dance spiralled, curved in on itself, like a bull’s horn, twisting, turning. And in the very centre I stood with him—masked and horned. He was like an old bull—huge and hairy, with staring black eyes—and we stood there, side by side, under the moon, waiting for the ecstatic dancers to reach us, to find the way.

It was the most beautiful of the youths who came first, unwinding the golden thread I had spun, the thread that binds all, that ties us to the earth, that we dance with, over, under and through; and with the sword I had given him, glittering like copper under the moon, the young man took the horn of the bull in his fist and slit the taurine throat. 

What happened next is a blur of red and dancing limbs. An intoxicating fall into darkness. A sleep of death.

Until I am awoken by the sun, by a man’s hand, by a warmth that fills me up after the cold blackness of night.

I open my eyes, and on the horizon, just slipping over the edge, is a ship. It means nothing to me that I can remember; for here, by my side, is the bull—horned as ever, but now a young calf, with a soft muzzle and wild, kind eyes. The fragrance of spring flowers enfolds me.

I do not know where I am. But I know I am where I am meant to be—with him—shining in the morning sun.

I feel reborn.

Europe Dancing by Bulgarian artist, Emilia Bayer (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

In The Dead Of Night: A Poem

In the dead of night 

  there is life and light : 

the dead dance 

Dreams whisper our desires

Grandmother Owl swallows us 

  whole

and in her belly we 

  grow

(23^rd August 2017)

Grandmother Owl, gouache on card (June 2018)