Mothertongue

This work follows on from my previous painting, concerning the ancestral voices going back seven generations, the thread of knowledge that we may be able to learn how to grasp once more. Only this time, I acknowledge too the original guardians of wisdom, the serpents who are at the core of the mythologies of so many cultures around the world; the snakes that women once spoke to, and danced with, and welcomed into their houses with bowls of milk.

I attempted to get the paint to crack again, though the result is not as even as it was the first time. Yet it is enough. I am embracing imperfection, learning how to work with the things that do not go to plan, and create what I need to create anyway. 

I am finding that painting is something that I can do at the moment (little by little), in contrast to writing, which requires a kind of mental energy I just can’t summon. Though I miss playing with words, and feeling stories flow through me, I am instead speaking through images, and returning to ideas that tugged at my heartstrings half my lifetime ago. If I can, I am going to follow this serpentine thread back into the heart of things. Maybe it will lead me to my mothertongue—my inner wisdom, and the wisdom of my foremothers—which will give me the knowing and language I need to speak with words once more. 

And now the words ‘mother tongue’, language, widen out for me, as I see that the relationship to the one who has given us birth, and to that universe which engendered our being, might be the same as our relationship to language: we must trust words and the coming of words. (Susan Griffin, from ‘Thoughts on Writing: A Diary’, in Made from this Earth: An Anthology of Writings by Susan Griffin, Harper & Row: New York, 1982, p. 230)

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

Necklace of Mouths

When I painted Ancestress, I also prepared another piece of paper at the same time, and achieved the same cracking (which I have since learnt is probably because I added insufficient water to the gouache), so I used it to create this image. 

When I was watching Max Dashu’s video, ‘Grandmother Stones of Megalithic Europe,’  I am sure she said that the ancestor figures are generally depicted without mouths. As the ancestors no longer have bodies, and thus mouths, through which to speak, this made sense. Hence, Ancestress has no mouth, but rather, speaks through her presence.

Yet, the idea of voices, of story and poetry and language, echoing back through time, was something I kept returning to. That’s why this figure has seven mouths—her own, plus six hanging below like necklaces. There is a reason for this, as Jay Griffiths writes:

Many cultures conceive the future and plan for it by looking ahead seven generations; the Iroquois Confederacy of Six Nations, for instance, living in the remains of their ancestral land in America and Canada, consider the effects of every decision they take ‘unto the seventh generation’. African and Polynesian tribes, too, were, traditionally, said to look ahead at least seven generations. Seven generations, it is thought, is chosen because that is the greatest number one could hope to know in one’s own life; one’s great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, sister, daughter, grand daughter and great grand daughter. (Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, Flamingo: London, 1999, p. 225)

To look ahead seven generations, to always keep the future in mind, would have a momentous impact on human behaviour and morality. But what about looking back also? What could we learn from listening to the voices of those who have come before us?

In the film Aluna, about the Kogi people of Colombia, I was struck by one of their ideas: that each generation knows less than the one before—not more, as Westerners would tend to assume. And we know less because we are moving away from the source, further in time from the first ancestors, the people and beings who knew the most, because they were closest to the beginning of things.

There is a thread of knowledge that winds back through time, a twisting labyrinth of story and words and wisdom, that spills from the silent mouths of our forebears. That thread runs through the now of our blood and living bodies, back to the then of ancient times. If we listen closely, perhaps we will hear it whispering.

Necklace of Mouths, watercolours and gouache on gesso prepared paper (2018–2019) 

Ancestress

My studio is quite a long way from being ‘properly finished’. I still need another bookshelf, blinds and curtains, shelving for art supplies, and to decorate the walls with images. I had excitedly thought that 2018 would be the year of finding courage, trusting in the unknown, and recommitting myself wholeheartedly to art and writing because I would have this creative sanctuary to work in. How wrong I was! Just painting the inside and finding the rudimentary furniture I needed took much, much longer than expected. I am disappointed, and a little frustrated. Yet recently I have started to spend some time in my green cocoon, and this little painting has emerged. 

Called Ancestress, she began life as a rough painted sketch of a kind of female icon. Some of the inspiration for her definitely came from watching Max Dashu’s fascinating ‘Grandmother Stones of Megalithic Europe’, which is replete with imagery of the numinous and enigmatic ancestor spirits of the prehistoric past. I wanted to create something that called to mind such beings, a foremother of my own.

The cracking of the paint was unintentional. I added some gum arabic to the black gouache, which I assume is the cause, though I am not sure why it has done that. I was at first quite dismayed, but eventually came to see it as one of those happy accidents that happens from time to time in art-making. 

I love the serene solidity of this image, her gentle mountain-like presence. I hope to create more work like her as I continue to delve into the lost memories of the ancient past, and unearth my own ancestral stories and knowledge, in the (hopefully) generative womb of my studio. 

Ancestress, watercolours and gouache on gesso prepared paper (2018)