March Towards the Equinox - Things get a little wyrd sometimes.

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‘I try not to be too magical.’ I said, to him. The words hanging in the air like a resonant thread for a moment, and in the weeks after those words came back to me again and again. With the question ‘What if I stop holding back on the magical and the mystical?’ What if I allow it a little closer? What if I admit it to myself and others and allow it to infuse my art and my writing.

Because you know, deep in the wilds of these isles there are places of the in between. Where the land speaks a little louder, where tree’s have portals and brooks not only twinkle in the sunlight, they sing ancient songs. These are the places where the beings the ancient ancestors of these isles knew well, can still be found, for those who are willing to step out of the over-culture and into a deeper one.

I’d always thought the Marches - the area on the border between England and Wales - was called the marches because of all the marching that went on there from soldiers in the ancient past. Its not though, its from an ancient word meaning borderland. Perhaps its not only a border between England and Wales, perhaps its a border with another realm too.

And in this place, this borderland, between England, Wales and elsewhere. Things get a little weird sometimes, a little wyrd, a little strange.  And sometimes, if you catch it in just the right light you’ll see the dragons sleeping in mounds of earth we call hills, the stone watchers sit upon them, the tree folk live in the woodland, and denizens of a world thats not quite this one can sometimes be seen a wandering at twilight.

A lot of my life at the moment is on the edge of the forest, a woodland that breathes and speaks and sings with aliveness and animate beings. There are tree stumps there that are powerful wise women, stones with faces of lichen, and half glimpsed beings as tall as the trees that appear in more sharp focus when I draw them, and little beings that are both foot tall warriors and moss covered fallen branches of trees.

If you sit for long enough in that forest they might speak to you, and, from what I gather their are some that are worried about us humans, they can see that that a lot of us have lost our understanding that we are nature in nature, and that we a part of nature not apart from it.

March Marches on.

Since I wrote the above back in February faerie is becoming more and more a theme that permeates my drawing and writing. In early March I exhibited at the Froudian Faerie weekend and briefly met an art hero of mine Brian Froud. My little forest spirit Continual becoming joined the Faerie trouping and I was infused with inspiration by a combination of meeting Brian Froud and an artist I’d never heard of before called Iris Compiet who has created a beautiful book in a similar vein to Froud’s ones called “Faeries of the faultlines’. Seeing their work and talking to both of them inspired me and gave me a little hope for this journey in art, given me a little push towards the book ideas I have, and allowing my art practice to become even more of a magical playground.

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March seems to have flown by as the spring energy has scooped me up and put me back into the mode of action. A major fairy project I’ll be working on for the next two years is now in development alongside this one! I’m creating a Fairy Tarot deck for US Games, Two years is a long time, but with this project alongside it, I’m now on a very tight schedule!

I’m intending to write and post my next blog towards the end of April, I have a plan for April but you never quite know what will happen next in this fairy-tale called life.

Love & Sparkles

Rachel

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Meeting Gaia - February

Meeting Gaia

“A glowing blue orb, the most magnificent jewel I’ve ever seen rotated gently in the air above me…

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I approached the Abbey, past the cherry blossom and the budding blackthorn,  past the daffodils bravely sprouting from the ground, through the grand doors that shrunk my proportions to miniature. To set foot into the energy of sacredness and stillness of the Abbey. The grand work of art that is the architecture of the abbey towering above me. There is a full bodied resonance to ancient abbey’s cathedrals and churches, it’s as if the contemplation, praise and prayer that has been consistently performed over the centuries been reverberates on in the present. An energy of sacred-ness and stillness envelops me as I step foot inside, I turned the corner around a column and I was entranced.

A glowing blue orb, the most magnificent jewel I’ve ever seen, rotated gently in the air above me. A sculpture of light and pure beauty.  Over the speakers an astronaut spoke of seeing the Earth from space and how life changing that was.

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Enchanted I found myself a spot by a column and sat there, mind totally empty, senses fully alive seeing, heart wide open, Witnessing.  I sat for an hour on the floor or the abbey, aware I was sitting on the earth, made of the earth, surrounded by things and people of the earth.

As I sat there in awe and wonder at our home and mother, my visionary imagination took me on a journey.  I was no longer sat in an abbey. I was sat the vast blackness of space cross legged, in silence and stillness watching our planet, our home our mother spin and turn. Seeing how I and every one I’ve ever loved, and, everyone I will ever love is a part of this precious planet.  The simplicity of it and the profound depth of creativity of it.

How can I explain the spirals of experience that flooded my mind, imagination, emotion and energy? The brightly humbled magic and mystery of it all. The deep blessing of being awake and aware and part of this life. How my bones are made of mountains and my blood is made of oceans, and how yours are too.  It recalled to me how Sophie Strand speaks of the body as an ancestor and community, and how the earth is like that body.  How like the bacteria and microbes and community of life that makes up my body yet I am one body, how like that the earth, how we are part of the earths body.

How small the amazon rainforest is, and where even is Britain? And how brave those early explorers were to go adventure across those vast wild oceans! How small the patches of land these 8 billion humans inhabit, how large the vast expanse of ocean, how intensely and incredibly blessed I am to be alive and awake and part of all this. What a creative playground this is!

It took a lot to pull myself away from my contemplation of our world, and as I left the Abbey I looked up at the starlit sky and was reminded of the visions I had when I was a child.  In one of which an ancient, slightly terrifying faerie being told me quite specifically my purpose in this lifetime was to make art that re-weaves the interconnection of humans and nature.

In my next post I’ll write a little about Faerie.

Love & Sparkles

Rachel

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Endings and Beginnings - Samhain to Imbolc

It’s the death of the year, I’m in a large circle of cloaked and robed people. A woman dressed in black, face covered holds out a cauldron in front of me, she is embodying the Cailleach in ceremony, radiating power she stands waiting, to receive what I am willing to let go of.

I put out my hand, energy flows from me, something is released. The tarot cards told me what I must let go of is the reversed King of Wands. The reversed King of Wands to me symbolises all that is standing in the path of stepping to my full creative power in the world. I let that flow, I am lighter, I am brighter, new possibilities are opening for time I call the womb of the year. Two days later I receive the news, the seed of my new year is conceived and this new chapter of my artistic journey has its go ahead from the arts council.

November was a month of frantic activity trading at Christmas markets. In my rare quiet moments, I could dream into the possibilities this opportunity gives me.  I got very excited about an idea for my first nature immersion experience, and in my get things done - left-brained - yang - do it mode I scheduled it in.

“Thud! Pain, pause silence. Boom, dizzy strangeness, thud again. Shock, pain, fear. Blood all over my hand and head. I’d asked the woods to watch out for me and keep me safe. I knew it wasn’t safe that day…”

I’d had this idea an exciting shining idea. Because WOW the arts council are Paying me to go do my thing out on the land. I’d planned for the Winter Solstice I’d go to the reconstructed Iron Age roundhouse (also known as the house of the ancestors) and spend the day there with my sketchbook, some candles and a fire. Have a day there as a dreaming den to vision my project for this year.

In my excitement to dive in, I ignored the warning signs. First I’d woken up around 3am with the message No woods, Not Today, Bad Idea. Normally when I wake up with messages in the night I write them down for the morning, as they’re generally useful. This time I wasn’t listening, I turned over and went back to sleep.

When I woke up in the morning the wind was blowing up for a storm, my tummy felt twisted. The wants of my mind and the intelligence of my bodily intuition and quiet voice of inner wisdom,  were in complete disagreement with each other. After much overthinking and debate with myself I decided to go down to the studio and make my decision when I was there.

I sat on a bench by the old fire circle watching the wind in the trees. When I say wind I mean something coming up to a gale, blowing up for a storm. Knowing it was a bad idea, knowing I wanted to do it anyway, questioning my intuition, questioning what I was reading from the weather conditions and nature. Questioning my bone deep knowing. Ignoring my sensory and situational awareness, definitely not being fully present in the moment with what I was doing, and listening far too vividly to my organised and somewhat impulsive tendency. I made the decision to throw caution to the wind and do it anyway.

A friend had said a few days before that there wasn’t much wood up there, so I took a wheelbarrow, chucked some wood in it, and various bits and pieces. After pausing for a quick moment to ask the woods to keep me safe I made my way up there.

It was muddy, the trees were creaking ominously, the gusts of the brewing storm made the trees blow around in a decidedly unfriendly manner. But I wasn’t paying all that much attention to what I was doing or how I was getting there. I wasn’t being mythopoetic about it. I just wanted to get to the roundhouse make my fire and sit down and rest after the franticness of the winter trading season. Seeing how slippy it was I went the long way round and still there was quite a push to get up to the spot where the roundhouse sits.

As I pushed myself up the slippy muddy hill, I fell and the wheelbarrow fell on top of me.

Thud! Pain, pause silence. Boom, dizzy strangeness, thud again. Shock, pain, fear. Blood all over my hand and head. Once I stumbled to my feet in a strange daze,  I gathered what I could and put it under the eaves of the roundhouse and stumbled back out of the woods to the shining light of caring friends.

Concussion is an interesting space to be in, I couldn’t really do much thinking at all, the world was soft and dreamlike. My memories of it are hazy and strange, my most vivid memory of that time is standing outside in the Winters cold gazing up golden ochre-brown sunset sky against the deep umber-full purple of the bare twigs.

The hospital said I needed to be with ‘responsible adults’ to watch over me, so I spent a few nights in my kind friend's spare room. My days were filled by digitally painting a woman dancing with a heron by a pond in the depths of winter, whilst listening an Audiobook of  to Dr Norrell and Johnathan Strange. So I did get to have my winter dreaming den time, but not in the way I was planning or expecting.

On reflection the wood had actually kept me safe, like I’d asked it too. Later that day the winds blew up into a full named wild creature of the sky sort of storm of 50+ mph winds - A really,  don’t go into the woods today - sort of storm.  My friend who has lived on this land for all her life went into the woods and fetched the bits and pieces that I’d left.  Whilst she was there she heard a crack and a massive bough of cherry came crashing down, and another tree possibly one of the poorly Ash trees also fell down. Luckily she was standing in the right spot to witness but not be harmed by it.  I’m so grateful that she was safe, and that she and her partner looked after me whilst I was recovering from my mishap.

When I recovered from my concussion I felt rather foolish, but was also given the opportunity for some self reflection.

“Listen with all your senses and all your sense - Common Sense, inner wisdom, what are the conditions telling me, listen to the stories in the wind. ”

Lessons

That day I had the lesson once again that if my mind is fighting with my intuition to pause, to seriously pause and listen to the wisdom of the moment. I’ll often do this when I’m not in ‘Get Stuff Done’ mode.  Listening with all the senses, sight, touch, smell, hearing, tasting, alongside common sense and intuitive sense. Yet, i’d overridden what I’d received with all of my senses with my impulsive desire to chase an idea, and felt the consequences of that in my brain and body. In a way it’s quite apt I injured my head as I wasn’t actually using my head properly.

Automatic Drawing

In the stillness of winter and the enforced rest of concussion.  I returned to an old drawing practice of automatic drawing.  Surrealists see this as a way of channelling the irrational imagery of the unconscious, those more inclined to magic see it as a way of channeling messages from spirit or the great mystery, and those more inclined to new-age shamanic worldview see it as journeying with the materials.

Whichever story we tell about this practice all I know is that it has been the foundation of my creative practice for as long as I can remember drawing, which if I recall correctly was inspired by a guide in a dream, and is to me one of the entryways into the mythopoeic imagination.  A way of courting improvisational creativity, allowing ideas to come without the interference of the mind. It allows me to touch into full presence in the moment and touches the mystery of the spirit of the unknown that unfolds moment by moment.

Relationship building

I also realised I needed to deepen my thinking in how I relate to the land. Reflecting on how I approached my relating to the land that day, It wasn’t the approach that you would take when building a new relationship. When building a new connection, in my world at least.  You don’t generally dive in and spend the entire day with the new person. You’ll spend a little bit of time here, a bit of time there.  Have a catch up, a cup of tea, maybe a walk. It takes time to feel new people out, to build the trust and connection, to see how that connection feels and what organically flows and unfolds from that. I hadn’t fully considered that part of building a deeper mythopoetic relationship with the land that I’d need to treat it like building a new relationship.

Growing new leaves

These lessons have allowed me to slow down a bit for January and not be so frantic. Which is a complete change of pace as I’m coming out of four years of frantic survival mode combined with regular mini burn-outs.  It’s a real blessing to have the space where I can slow down and allow my art, dreams and ideas to have space to breathe and grow.

During December and January I noticed there were leaf buds on the trees, tucked away growing in their hard little casings, dreaming the leaves of next years spring into being and in that, saw this as a mirror of my own dreaming of this years activities.

Fairytale Protagonists

In January I spent quite some time in research, following my threads of fascination with the mythic and the animate. Listening to podcasts, reading books, diving into the internet alongside dreaming with drawing and writing.

An episode of my favourite podcast The Emerald by Joshua Schrei, called ‘Awake in the forest of dangers and wonders’, drew the ideas together for me.  In this episode he explores the mythic, fairytale and animate view of the forest. This added an important thread to my thinking around sensory and situational awareness whilst relating mythopoetically with the earth.

He speaks of how the protagonists in fairytales navigate the forest:

‘The sensory openness of the youngest daughter is a great gift in navigating the forest. Her mind has not yet decided that things are this way or that, or that stones never speak, or that the purpose of entering the forest is simply to get to the other side. She does not walk brashly into the forest. She walks as one who is learning, feeling, absorbing, listening paying attention… The fairytale protagonist navigates the forest through protocols of animacy. The forest is the place where trees and bushes and grasses and toadstools explain for those who will listen. What to do and what not to do. Who to talk to and who not to talk too… ‘The forest demands that we be awake, aware, in a place of strange sounds, marvellous sights of perils. and wonders. There is a place where it helps not to be the jaded one, the one who has already decided how life is. There is a place where it helps to walk humbly rather than brashly. To listen with respect to the forces all around. There is a place where is helps to feel through the skin, to listen through the feet, to tread delicately and hold each choice as precious. Where is this place:? Of course it’s right here,. This is the forest. The forest is consciousness, the forest is life, the forest is choices’

That sang to the words that came out of my drawing and reflection, ‘Listen with all your senses and all your sense - Common Sense, inner wisdom, what are the conditions telling me, listen to the stories in the wind.’ And so as we headed towards Imbolc (early February),  I could see the stirrings of the seedlings of the new in the world and in my creative practice.

In my next post I’ll tell you all about my first successful mythopoetic nature immersion, entering the forest like a fairytale protagonist, and my new painting ‘Continual Becoming’.

Love & Sparkles

Rachel

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I'm blown away by this news!

I’ve been blown away by some news I received this week.  In the summer I hit a (metaphorical) wall and almost gave up my dream I’m living of being a full time artist because the cost of living crisis was hitting hard and my self-employment was barely surviving after weathering the storms of the pandemic years.

At the same time as this was happening I came across a potential opportunity, a glimmer of hope. Something I’d never heard of before kept being mentioned, The DYCP - The Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice Grant, which is a grant for creatives in England to provide ‘Funding to support individuals who are cultural and creative practitioners and want to take time to focus on their creative development.’.  Me being me I saw that as a sign, and having nothing to lose devoted a lot of time and energy into putting together the best possible application I could muster.  My friend Manda of Creative Spark was running Funding Club a 10 week support group to encourage each other to apply for funding. I gambled on using my credit card and signed up.

During the process of  putting together my application I found myself reviewing and reflecting on everything I’d ever done in art,  and envisioning what I could do if money was no barrier and submitted an application to Arts Council for the grant to do just that.

In my application I asked for funding to ‘take my next transformative step towards creative freedom to build a well-researched, contextualised & economically sustainable practice. So that I can produce new visual work, solo and in collaboration, exploring a mythopoeic connection with the Earth which engages with the environmental crisis informed by nature immersion and coaching.’ (I’ll explain what that all means later)

This week, the day after Samhain (Halloween) I was in the studio, landing from two full weekend trading events, a day with the druids honouring Samhain and a horrid cold, that day I’d been pottering around putting paintings away and counting coasters. After I finished those tasks my curiosity got the better of me, and I thought I’d just pop on the Arts Council’s funding portal a day early to see if there was any news yet.  Not really expecting to see anything. The page loaded and instantly I saw there was a new message, and there sitting in my inbox was an offer letter!

‘Congratulations’ it said ‘your application is successful!’

I was in complete shock and disbelief. I’d spent some time mentally and emotionally preparing myself for a no, as it’s an incredibly competitive grant and thousands of artists apply for it, as it’s a life-changing opportunity and the chances of being successful are not all that high.

Discovering that I’m going to receive the grant is incredible, i’m deeply honoured and wildly grateful.  I don’t know how to express how much being given this opportunity right now means to me, the past 3 to 4 years have been ones of extraordinary change and difficulty in my life, and without telling anyone I’d given myself til the end of December to change course with my practice and if it wasn’t looking up I’d have been starting the new year looking for a new career. So it’s also a massive relief.

My project runs from today the 3rd of November 2023 to the 2nd of November 2024 so now my year of DYCP Rewilding Rachel begins!  This is a real new beginning for me and my art! And I want to share every step of the journey with you so I’ve made this blog and over the year I’ll share with you here: what I make, what I learn and how I’m putting this wonderful support from the arts council to use.  In my next post I plan to tell you all about my intentions for my DYCP year of Rewilding Rachel and how I envision that unfolding.

Love and sparkles

Rachy

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