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

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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 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 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 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 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 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 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.

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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 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 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 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 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 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 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 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

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 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment