Back in the heartland

Wild spirit magic

Two weekends ago I went home to Herefordshire. Dom and I went, to see my parents and my sister, and to go to the Hay Festival. We saw two talks there by two authors; Helen Macdonald and Robert Macfarlane.

Helen Macdonald is the author of H for Hawk; an amazing book about grief and training a hawk, and the need to disembody yourself and assume the characteristics and behaviours of something or someone else in times of emotional breakdown. This was perfect for me to hear, because firstly I agree with this as a coping mechanism, and secondly because I imagine myself as a specific other person in a specific other place often, (Lone Cowgirl in the Swaglands) to be able to imagine a place where people care about the environment, art is non-judgmental and free of commercial marketry, and there’s actually physical space and space in daily life to use our brain for it’s imaginative powers rather than functional Capitalist working world orientated ways.

Robert Macfarlane was brilliant to hear speak, because his book The Old Ways was the complete reason I wrote my dissertation at uni. That book made me realise that issues of our relationship to the natural world don’t have to be boring, over-adventurous or cheesy, they just ‘are’ – we just are related to it by the fact we have a language faculty and a physical body. As soon as we realise this its easy to feel connected, even if you live in the most urban, greenless place ever.

At Hay, Macfarlane spoke about his new book Landmarks with author Horatio Clare, which is all about the intense specificity of our colloquialisms and vocabularies that have been made to describe features of our lives in the natural world. I think this is important because those experiences are very delicate and detailed and we can’t use (as I say in my dissertation) language to portray this, but we might as well try!

Also – I hung out with my Queen, Clarrie. And my crazy but extremely beautiful Norwegian Forest Kitten, Tsonga. I shall paint him. He’s so wild.

I was walking round the garden at home which is looking very chic! Mama has made all these arrangements between grass, stones, pebbles, vessels, plants, elevations and slopes etc. They look to me like little worlds. I took photos of some which I will use for making paintings of the Swaglands, and then develop into installations made of artefacts; of architectural representations of cooperative human behaviour with nature and of openness to elements; the extension of attitude to built form.

Lastly – there are loads of animals at home! Look! And that’s not even half of them!

It’s a menagerie.

Sweet Clarice

Snail :) and Mama's black/white stone that she picked up from the water underneath The Bridge (as in the bridge between Denmark and Sweden!)

This little founatin is Grandma's. It was in her garden in Horsham, but Mama has it now.

It reminds me of a friend I met in Bosnia called Josip - it seems to have the same attitude as him!? headstrong but approachable.

Mama's Easter Island moai!

baby me with Mama. And an early artwork of mine, which is a french church! Someone reportedly offered my parents good money for it!

One of my more recent artworks! I guess not that much has changed.