"Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands." - Linda Hogan, Native American writer
"Life, death, creation and destruction, this is the world I find myself in. I want my art to echo these thoughts, everything in a state of flux, changing and reforming. A sense of decay along with life. Nothing is permanent and nothing stays the same." - Mark Chatterley
Dreaming Guardians by Hib Sabin. See more here As a shaman practitioner, Hib is acutely attuned to the connection between the human and animal spirit worlds. His cast of figures moves in and out of the spiritual world and evokes a certain ancient timelessness. Themes of transformation are quite common in his work, specifically transitional moments between life and death. - Stonington Gallery
".... may the protection of the ancestors be yours. And so may a slow wind work these words of love around you, an invisible cloak to mind your life." - John O'Donohue
While preparing for this post I kept coming back to Barry Smith's metal leaf forms. Barry is a generous soul who creates his metal artworks with love. He teaches his craft to others and sends his leaves into the world like little ambassadors, spreading peace and goodwill wherever they land.
Leslie Avon Miller's art speaks to me on an emotional level. I can't put my finger on it, but I'm thinking it has something to do with meraki. "Please keep demonstrating the courage that it takes to swim upstream in a world that prefers putting away for retirement to putting pen to paper, that chooses practicality over poetry, that values you more for going to the gym than going to the deepest places in your soul. Please keep making your art for people like me, people who need the magic and imagination and honesty of great art to make the day-to day world a little more bearable". - Shauna Niequist
When Donna was struggling with a creative block I kept thinking ..... when she returns she will create art that will catapult her to another level ..... and I wasn't mistaken! Her new pieces incorporating cold wax, oils and collage are beautiful.
Gabriel Lalonde. See blog, here. I visit Gabriel Lalonde's blog regularly because I enjoy his work. I detect a playful spirit with a "what if" attitude when it comes to his art.
" I would like to envelop myself ..... to enclose a sense of space, of landscape, within clay. Creating day by day, like putting entries in a diary" -- Ikuko Ando
Lynn Chadwick "And what is it to work with love? It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit." - Khalil Gibran
Totem by Robyn Gordon. Website, here. I felt a deep connection to this piece. The person who commissioned it shared just enough of her story for me to recognize similarities in my own life. I could relate to her story and was able to create the totem for the both of us. "One of the loveliest words in the English language is the word 'inspiration'. It signifies the creative breath. It also has to do with spontaneity, with the arrival of the unexpected image or idea in the mind. Inspiration is the flash of connecting light that suddenly comes from elsewhere and illuminates." - John O'Donohue
A very old bible of the Ethiopian Christian church, carefully inscribed on parchment in the sacred language 'Geez'. Secrecy by Margaret Atwood Secrecy flows through you, a different kind of blood. It's as if you've eaten it like a bad candy, taken it into your mouth, let it melt sweetly on your tongue, then allowed it to slide down your throat like the reverse of uttering, a word dissolved into its glottals and sibilants, a slow intake of breath -- And now it's in you, secrecy. Ancient and vicious, luscious as dark velvet. It blooms in you, a poppy made of ink. You can think of nothing else. Once you have it, you want more. What power it give's you! Power of knowing without being known, power of the stone door, power of the iron veil, power of the crushed fingers, power of the drowned bones crying out from the bottom of the well.
"My inspiration for the piece came as I was thinking about secrets and how they are so hard to keep; no matter how well hidden we may think they are, or how well-guarded we believe them to be, there is always a bit showing here and there around the edges. I was thinking of esoteric knowledge, such as magical grimoire (spell book), and how these two ideas are related" - Sharmon Davidson
Book of Shadows, a movie prop from Practical Magic.
If you've read the comments you will be as curious as I am about Priya Sebastian's illustrations for the poem Secrecy by Margaret Atwood. See Priya's blog post, here.
