New work at the Exchange/dark man/dreams

I have really enjoyed working at the Exchange. I am surrounded by artists, all are working on their own things. But we have so many overlapping threads, when we talk or share or collaborate if feels so natural. Mark and I found the time yesterday to record the dreams I had retrieved from my notebooks. We sat for over an hour in a quiet room, as the sun went down. It felt intense and quite emotionally charged, as I spoke about my dreams, and to a certain extent, re-lived some of them. I felt that they are alive, like little animals, with their own magical little domains.

Here is an example:

I dream of a different world. There is a class, or a meeting of people; we are by a pool in the navel of the Earth. There is deep water, the rocks are soft, there is a strong smell of roses, and many people who  are small in stature, like Siberian Steppe people. I had gone asking for a song, but instead a perfume was taught to me.

 

 

 

A dark man dream: (1996) colourful, of travel, new places, a dark man coming back for me, twice. The first time he gave me a beautiful set of golden tools decorated with flowers. the second time, in a city, he came riding a large young horse – white or black or both at the same time – with just a strap around his neck. I was with unknown female friends. He rode around us in an anti-clockwise direction. He came from a large white-ish geometric sphere I could just see in the distance. There was a vaguely sexual feeling in the dream, of doorways, new beginnings.

An eye dream(2002): A soft pink revolving eye, in a floor below. Was there for healing and penetration of this world, this reality. Good presence.

A bed dream(2002): Of being on a high bed. My mattress was on a join/seam line of one room – Earth- and on the other side of the seam was a different realm.

Boat/heart of the world dream(2003): A boat was coming, a black boat, 2 women in it, twins, old with long hair wavy and grey. They went round and round. I was in the water, the sea, someone was with me. We went underwater, we could breathe, saw light under there, the sun, could feel the earth/sea/world breathing, the heart beating. I leaned against the body of the world, I felt safe, I saw another  boat – pale, luminous – under water and an old man somewhere who took charge of the mooring of the boat above. I woke myself up when I saw the light under the water.

 

 

 

 

Working with Three Points of Contact in Penzance at the Exchange

Today I am going to work with Mark Vernon from Glasgow    http://archive.org/details/DataForTheDoubtfulPart7TheChildrenOfToastedCheese  .

He’s going to record me speaking about some of my dreams. He’ll decide later how he will use them. It feels exciting to be using them in a more focused way, rather than as a kind of back-up for my studio work.

I have been drawing animals and birds. Emma Saffy Wilson is also working with bird imagery, we discovered yesterday!

On the beach at Porthcurno, our first outing as a group, we saw the pregnant women in a line, part of The Third Paradise Event I believe (see 51st Biennale, Venice)

when the bird comes

Birds have been coming increasingly in my work over the past six months. A white bird hovers beside the face of the horse in ‘The Eternal Feminine draws us on’, and it is a bird which holds the transfirgured, joyous figure in ‘The Feathered and the Unfeathered’.

Yesterday in my studio I think I completed a work about the great white bird coming to heal the heart.

Soaring, the feathered and the unfeathered.

Soaring, I have been soaring, I touch my toe to the ground, gently push, and off I fly.

 

Opening a book at random today I found writing about Rumi. It recalled almost exactly my dreams about my body, the open windows, and the flesh which is also rubies. So how did I know this? Where had it come from? The poem must have been inside me already, or is an archetypal poem perhaps. I am full of fire still, in love, seeing your face before my eyes as I walk, as we pass each other unable to speak; as I write, as I sleep.

I have already had the experience of the ruby flesh, the opening, the parting of the robes. I have been prepared. My dream life has taught me. So what is my next step? How do I explore further? How do I make known the whispers, the night visions, the visiting birds and unfeathered creatures who have befriended me?

 

 

 

January 2013, new work in my studio

About a picture with a pregnant she – animal. One particular universe; the milk from the breast of Heaven provides the ladder. Wide-cupping branches of this tree, its cells full of condensed light, branches taut, held in the air, holding me tiny, breathless, pinned to it in the immensity, watching, always watching you the deer vast as space before me: in your mouth the central heart stem emerges from your crown with a shout – fluid and full of poise.

But maybe I prefer the first image? More about balance? Emptier.

 

A troop of long-tailed tits outside the window. This morning the bird song so loud that I thought the windows must be open – but they were not. The song penetrated the walls of this house, penetrated me.

The Spectator, 29th Dec, 2012, article by Laura Gascoigne: New Dawn for Newlyn School

Really pleased to see a photograph of a recent work, ‘Plant Spirit’, in today’s Spectator (easily accessable on-line) as part of an article by Laura Gascoigne on recent develoments in the life of Newlyn’s art community. This work is at Millennium in St. Ives.

Laura also reviews my show at Newlyn Art Gallery;  she will be on the panel at the discussion on January 26th, together with myself and Professor Penny Florence.

Dreams, and more

That dream of the bright windows in my body, I opened them and light was streaming from within them. Another, of looking at myself naked in a mirror; I peeled the skin away, my flesh was studded with jewels, ruby red and clear as pomegranate seeds.

A recent dream (Christmas night) of being in a large crowd of people at a show of my work and going around listening to what people were saying. One woman said she thought the figures reminded her of ants and I thought to myself in the dream, she is on a different wavelength, how can I get through to her? So I went up to the woman and I said ‘they are not ants, they are like little beings we don’t often see, which flicker at the edge of our awareness, which hover, dip and fly, such as we might see in a dream, such as exist between worlds.’ Then as I was speaking people crowded around me and it became dark with bodies and the human mass, and I asked them to move away from me. The gallery seemed like a very open space; there was no ceiling or roof; above was the sky (the world). I had the feeling of courage in the dream to speak up about my work.

 

The butterfly in my book, butterfly in face, butterfly in the sky of my veins, in my arm as I move it to sweep away that picture of you, right before my eyes.

 

 

Images of works in the show, and notes on blue light

There is a little blue flame burning at the top of my head. It comes from my crown. A blue light sometimes burns between us, Osiris. I step into a blue fire, I step into you. Your blue flames dance all around me, blue flames like wings.

A great wave is perpetually about to break in me. I contain this wave, the blue flame, I cover my edges, I build transparency and distance, I learn to move silently away.

 

 

 

 

More pictures of the Opening evening

Trying to speak about The Mother holds back the Flood. I didn’t mention the pink band at the top, but I thought of Rudolf Steiner and what he had said about peachy pink and it’s deeply sacred associations. There were many things I could have said in my talk but did not.Partly the heat of the moment, my nerves, but also not feeling confident enough that I could adequately articulate what was in my heart .

In retrospect I wish I had mentioned the surge of joy I felt when I read the first 3 pages of Penny’s first draft of her essay. I experienced a deep and certain surge of energy; I walked around the house and garden, I wanted to jump up and down, I could hardly contain what I felt: – but I did, and it was like a great charge to my inner battery.

In the talk I also wanted to describe how my dogs behaved when my Father died. I was in his house with Frankie and Missis, just waking to a dark dawn when the telephone rang. It was 6 am and I knew it could only mean one thing. The nurse told me he had gone. It was too early to make any other calls so I returned to bed. Frankie curled up in the curve of my belly, and Missis Darling stretched out around my spine. They kept me warm with their cuddle, and helped me to feel less desolate.

Seeds need darkness to germinate. Inside our bodies it is dark but so alive and full of activity. I wish I had been able to describe what the rich darkness means to me. It is full of possibilities and it is where the light comes from. We need deep roots to grow tall strongly.