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Category Archives: Artists
Reviews, biography, comments, in fact anything to do with artists past or present.
Thank you music, you keep me flowing
I really don’t have a clue how I would have go through 2020 without music so, to keep the flow of gratitude moving, I really want to share some of the most uplifting, transformational, nourishing musical highlights of my year. Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Artists, Consciousness & evolution, Divine feminine, divine masculine, Health & wellbeing, Menu, Music & theatre, Personal Development, Spirituality
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Tagged 528 Hz, Amber Lily, Awaken album, Bhakti Yoga, Chris Assaad, creative process, Davor Bozic, divine feminine, divine masculine, Fia, gratitude, Jahnavi Harrison, Kate Bush, Lee Harris, Lion album, music as medicine, music as nourishment, Patty Griffin, river flow, supporting artists, the miracle note, transformational music
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The unmistakable lightening of days
Let me take you on a walk through a city; am impromptu Imbolc ceremony with a difference. No green pasture this, no village tree surrounded by fields…but, rather, pavements cracked with gold that speak of new beginnings. As ever, my … Continue reading →
Posted in Ancient sites, Archaeology, Artists, Consciousness & evolution, Divine feminine, divine masculine, History, Leylines, Life journey, Menu, metaphor, Personal Development, Remembering, Symbolic journeys
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Tagged against tyranny, balance, Boudica, Boudicca, brexit, Brigid's Day, Burne-Jones, Christoper E Street, city of gold, druids in London, earth connection, earth star, electrosensitivity, English eccentricity, enlightened city, fierce womanhood, Hampstead Heath, Helen Allingham, highly sensitive, Imbolc, intuition, light your own fire, London leylines, London's lost rivers, married to the Earth, Mary Magdalene, mass awakening, metoo, mothers and daughters, mystic, Nature in the city, new cycle, out of sight, personal growth, Pre-Raphaelites, rebirth, redheads, River Fleet, Rossetti, sacred feminine, sacred landscape London, sacred rivers, sacred sites, schumann resonance, silence breaker, silenced female, sisterhood, spiritual awakening, springtime, suppressed feminine, trees, trust in nature, vagina museum, visionary, what is Imbolc really about?, wild swimming, William Blake, William Morris, women take action
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2 Comments
Fluidity and form in the living landscape of life
…these two artists I encountered had something in common. Though their mark making was pared back, economical with nothing superfluous in there at all, these landscapes THROBBED with unseen energetic life, before my very eyes, and reminded me that all things in existence are like this. We are all made-up of so much more than that which is registered by the first five senses and these other impulses make all of us, and the very landscape with which we interact at these unseen levels, who we truly are… Continue reading →
Posted in Ancient sites, Art, Art purpose, Art transformation tool, Artists, Consciousness & evolution, Divine feminine, divine masculine, Exhibitions, Landscape art, Life journey, Menu, Painting, Personal Development
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Tagged abstraction, ancient landscape, art as communicator of the abstract, Art purpose, balanced brain, conveying feeling in art, energy art, energy in the landscape, evolution, form and fluidity, harmony, holistic perception, inspiration, JF Blighton RE, Landscape art, language of art, left and right hemispheres, letting go of control, masculine and feminine, Philip Hughes, philosophy, return of the sacred feminine, the need for flow, unseen realms, whole brain function
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1 Comment
Pearls of wisdom
When women get together doing what they love, especially crafts that bring them together into easy community with other women, and for no other reason than they relish doing it, the “accidental” results catalysed by this can be incredibly powerful. Not all of us want to become game changers in a really big or public way and its just so important to remember that we are trembling the earth with profound and much-needed currents of change even as we pursue interests that seem to have no overt effect beyond ourselves or our small circle. We are singing the song of the feminine, demonstrating what it is to have roots again, giving ourselves and others permission to do likewise and being that agent of change at the level where it really happens…at the grassroots of the extremely ordinary. And if we happen to inspire others along the way then good…but its not, directly, why we do it. That is the whole point; our focus is stepped away from that terribly masculine urge to roll everything our like it is some sort of strategy or means to an end. We hold space for doing what is already complete “as it is”; for it brings us such profound joy in connection with where we are in this moment. Nothing disperses anxiety or fear more quickly than spending time in such a place; and this ripples out to our families, our communities and so the world at large. Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Art purpose, Art transformation tool, Artists, Consciousness & evolution, Craft & design, Divine feminine, Health & wellbeing, Life journey, Menu, Personal Development
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Tagged changing the world through ordinary activities, coming out of solitude, contributing to a better future for all, craft, doing things for their own sake, everyday transformation, follow your bliss, grassroots goddess, knitting, needlepoint, sacred feminine, spining, taking part in the world, tapestry, transformation through craft, why craft circles are game-changers, why we do things, women in community, women's circles, wool craft
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5 Comments
Out of the box
Perhaps Pandora was only ever meant to be the counter-impulse to a world that became so fixated upon compartmentalising everything that it was missing the point (or denying) that there is so much more than that which can be defined or pigeon-holed by the mind. Perhaps she was our safety-catch, primed to spring apart at just the right moment to save ourselves from our own self-defeating, self-limiting intellects. Perhaps many of us have experienced the unleashing of our own internal Pandora in recent years or decades and it is the combined effect of all these boxes springing open as one (mimicking many breakdowns and disasters in our lives…but, all of them, evolutionary in their nature) that is manifesting our next biggest evolutionary leap forwards. Who knows what small (or significant) part these archetypes have played, even as depicted in well-timed artworks hung on the walls of places where we spent our formative years; who know what a painting in a college full of women did for over thirty years at a key time in history (one of many drops in an evolutionary ocean). What makes a story such as hers ebb in and out of favour across the annuls of time yet never fully disappearing, even when we have tried to bury it deep in the basement under layers of dust? Yet, not to be set back by that unpromising outcome (much like many of us…) she found her way back into the daylight. Perhaps she has been pushing forwards with her message, with even more vigour than ever; the somewhat inconvenient wake-up call suggesting we might all want to let ourselves out of that mind-box once in a while. Whilst there were always going to be those that weren’t ready to hear her, I take heart from the fact there were others who were prepared to seek her out from her cobwebs and put her back in full view where she was always meant to be….(read more).
The true story of a painting lost and refound and how the way this became woven into my own life-story helped me to appreciate and understand the opening-up of my own personal Pandora’s Box as the evolutionary process that it was.
Posted in Art, Art history, Art metaphor, Art purpose, Art technique, Art transformation tool, Artists, Biography, Books, Consciousness & evolution, Divine feminine, History, Life journey, Menu, Personal Development, Remembering, Symbolic journeys
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Tagged divine feminine, Dr Carl Calleman, Eve, evolution, Garden of Eden, heightened experience, JD Batten, left and right hemispheres, ninth wave, Pandora, Pre-Raphaelite, quantum-hollographic perspective of history, return of the right hemisphere, rise of feminism, St Andrews Hall Reading University, suppression of the female, The Nine Waves of Creation, yin-yang
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5 Comments
Leading me up the garden path
The weather that delivered on the day of our long-planned visit to Charleston turned out to be nothing like what I had painted in my head; the sky was tipping water by the bucket-full. But then, of course, everything glistened; the fruit, especially, glistened as though freshly varnished and the petals hugged droplets of water like glass teardrops perfectly poised. We got to marvel at the way the bees knew how to line up with their backs to the wind and hang upside down beneath the flower heads – one on each bloom – until the rainshower was over. We got that kind of light that is clear and crisp, not washed-out and without subtlety as on a typical summer’s day. The velvet reds “zinged” and the greens looked like freshly squeezed life-zest personified; vibrant and rejuvenating to receive with all the senses. One of the gifts was the unexpected juxtaposition of a dripping-wet female form peeking out through vivid wet leaves and abundantly ripe fruit;her wet face had something to tell me and it was nothing at all about tears…”I sleep; I do not weep” were words that came boomeranging back at me later that same weekend in yet another stunning garden and the journey in between turned out to be a labyrinth of self-discovery through a landscape of universal themes. Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Art history, Art in the living space, Art purpose, Art technique, Artists, Consciousness & evolution, Divine feminine, History, Holiday destinations, Life journey, Literature, Menu, Personal Development, Photography, Symbolic journeys, Travel
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Tagged Bloomsbury, Brighton, Charleston Farmhouse, Duncan Grant, everything is perfect, garden design, Harold Nicholson, homosexuality, labyrinth, Long Man of Wilmington, male and female, male and female collaboration, marriage, relationships, sacred feminine, serpent, Sissinghurst, St Michael & All Angels Church Berwick, telluric energy, Vanessa Bell, Vita Sackville West, yin and yang
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2 Comments
When you lose something you find something
Talking about a day of two loses on a very different scale and yet all strangely synchronistic…joined together by a song lyric. And there’s nothing like the “loss” of a living artist (though their offerings live on and on) to bring their work and motivations sharply into focus as we are suddenly inundated with retrospectives of their life’s output via every cultural channel there is; its like everything they were about is suddenly distilled down into an extraordinarily potent brew that we all get to take a sip of (if we choose to). So, maybe saturation in the mentality of an artist who never feared his most obscure offerings being ridiculed or rejected is just what is called for right now in a culture where popularity is courted as a measure of artistic success; a timely reminder that our best output, most probably, lies in a dark room from which we create our own version of light in a state of oblivion as far as the opinions of others are concerned and with no sense of an audience peering in at us. Maybe true creative genius is only unleashed once we learn to please ourselves above all others… Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Art as a business, Art purpose, Art transformation tool, Artists, Biography, Consciousness & evolution, Culture, Entertainment, Life choices, Lifestyle, Music & theatre, Music composition, Personal Development, Social media
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Tagged art lives on, Blackstar lyrics, breaking the phone habit, create like no one is watching you, David Bowie, death, dropping ties and attachments, following your bliss, freedom to create, gaining perspective, how artists inspire us, inspiration, keeping things in proportion, Lazarus lyrics, life without a phone, loss, mercury retrograde, motivation as an artist, popularity culture, reactions to David Bowie's death, starman, the obsession with popularity, true creative genius, what is art?, what is artistic success?, what's really important, witnessing our reactions
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Painting backgrounds – a weekend of art films
For two hours, or thereabouts, on Saturday I was held utterly absorbed by a film and, straight afterwards, held interested enough to avidly cross-reference what I had just seen with some reading until bedtime. The film was called ‘Effie Gray’ … Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Art history, Art metaphor, Art purpose, Art technique, Artists, Consciousness & evolution, Films, History, Life journey, Painting, Personal Development, Sky in art
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Tagged a woman's lot nineteenth century, art in movies, artist evolution, divine feminine, Effie Gray, JMW Turner, John Everett Millais, John Ruskin, Mr. Turner, nature, Ophelia, painting light, Pre-Raphaelites, screenplay, The Order of Release, the sun is god, truth, unconsummated marriage, wholeness, William Morris, women in art, women mental health
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4 Comments
Two exhibitions: a day of unlikely marriages
This week, I visited two art exhibitions in Oxford that have been in my diary for a long time. At the first, I was greeting on entry by the immense William Morris tapestry “The Attainment” with its depiction of the … Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Art history, Art metaphor, Art technique, Artists, Consciousness & evolution, Exhibitions, History, Life journey, Light, Personal Development, Prints, Pure potential, Spirituality, Symbolic journeys, Writing
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Tagged Albion, Andy Warhol, Apprentice & Master Exhibtion, art & politics, art metaphor, Ashmolean, blacksmith, creation, divine inspiration, heaven here now, innate knowledge, Jerusalem, light and dark, Los, Love is Enough Exhibition, male and female reunion, new era birthing, Oxford, paradise now, potential, printing in relief, stasis and dynamic tension, symbolic journeys, The Attainment William Morris, the Holy Grail, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, visionary art, William Blake, William Morris, yoga
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When time stood still in Provence…
We knew we were in France again as soon as we started seeing the electricity pylons that look like giant cats with whiskers. The second clue was the distinctive jingle that always plays (loudly) out of the French railway station … Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Art purpose, Art technique, Artists, Biography, Entertainment, Films, Floral art, Holiday destinations, Landscape art, Light, Literature, Meditation, Painting, Personal Development, Photography, Seasons, Travel
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Tagged A Good Year, beyond time, Bonnieux, Cezanne's studio, energy art, gardens, Gordes, holidays, Jean de Florette, La Gloire de mon père, Le Château de ma mère, Lourmarin, Marcel Pagnol, moments of light, Mont Sainte-Victoire, My Father's Glory, My Mother's Castle, painting energy, Peter Mayle, Provence, radiance, Stillness, transcendence, travel by train
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