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.

One more time with feeling

Warning, this is a post about death and grief and creation

LET'S GO DANCING I DO BELIEVE WE"RE ONLY PASSING THROUGH

I wrote the above scrawlings in January when my Grandma died. I didn't even like Ben Howard but this song was helpful for feeling the sadness. I didn't think i'd show anyone, but then I remembered - what's the point in making art and creating things and having something to say if it's not about something universal and personal and real. Which death and grief and sadness is.

So I scanned it this morning after watching a film last night.

I watched Tracks last night, a film about the true story of Robyn Davidson walking 2000 miles from Central Australia to the West Coast.

It was extremely intense and personally emotional for me, least of all because a friend of mine died in the Outback and we had spent some of my best days out there.

I didn’t think making notes about it would work as it was too powerful a viewing experience to put into words, but I had a go.

The Outback became a lifespan – a temporal emotion.

She walked in the dust bath, swarming with a hot lack of civilisation and wild mercy.

Everything she had lost appeared and accompanied her.

Her dead mother. Her old dead dog.

When Diggity swallowed poison she had to shoot him. She had to shoot a charging bull camel. Nature and its autonomous occurrences took no prisoners of her feelings.

When she reached the Indian Ocean, it was as though she was meeting the salvation of death; a rent in the dust of earth living.

She was Grandma entering the water.

Grandpa was waiting for all the while.