HEALING GODDESS

 Newly completed Healing Goddess (next to Nigerian helmet mask) by Robyn Gordon

"Our work as artists is courageous and scary. There is no brief that comes along with it, no problem solving that's given as a task....An artist's work is almost entirely inquiry based and self-regulated. It is a fragile process of teaching oneself to work alone, and focusing on how to hone your quirky creative obsessions so that they eventually become so oddly specific that they can only be our own." - Teresita Fernandez

Since I've just completed carving my healing goddess I thought I would share with those interested about what initially inspired me to carve her. The new carving is a late addition to a series of Healing Goddesses I carved several years ago.

From an old series several years ago.

A primitive Songye figure or Nkisi (from the Democratic Republic of the Congo) started my thought process about doing a series.

Image courtesy of Boris Kegel-Konietzko

I thought he was rather ugly at first though some would disagree because he has a raw, primitive energy and charm and in any case he was not created to be a work of art but an Nkisi. An Nkisi  is a power figure that is believed to have protective powers for the owner and his family. 

Wrapped around the large figure are a number of smaller figures which could be handed out to those who needed protection from evil or misfortune. When the need for protection had disappeared the small figures would then be returned  to the bigger figure. 

I fell in love with this Songye Ceremonial vessel. It is a gourd with an inner basket (containing potatoes, I think) and several miniature power figures attached to the outside.

I think the vessel has a feel-good quality about it as opposed to the slightly uneasy feeling I get from the Nkisi. 

Nestled amidst the wood shavings on my worktable .... a favourite place to photograph my carvings.

It was important to me that my Healing Goddesses exuded a feel good energy and I can only hope that I've achieved that. It was certainly therapeutic to carve them.

THE SOFT UNFOLDING OF WAVES

We have returned from three glorious weeks at the Wild Coast, feeling replenished and at peace with the world. 

 Most days were soft and meditative, filled with winter sunshine and the hushed unfolding of waves on the sand.

I learned a new word from Mo yesterday.
Apricity: The word apricity represents a simple and familiar yet a very specific phenomenon - the sun's warmth on a cold winter's day. (Click on the word to read further)

It seems appropriate to introduce the word here since, the world and his wife..... dog.....goat and cow, within a kilometer's radius, seemed to wander down to the beach to stand in the sun, .....relishing apricity on a winter's day.

I walked around this bull several times, clicking my camera and he remained  unperturbed. Just a twitch of tail and ear.

I can't imagine our holidays without the resident dogs. They add much joy and tail wagging to our days. 

The sea poems of Pablo Neruda also seem appropriate here. Follow the link if you wish to read a few more.

The Sea by Pablo Neruda

I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don't know if I learn music or awareness,
if it's a single wave or it's existence,
or only it's harsh voice or it's shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.

It's not simply the shells crunched
as if some shivering planet
were giving signs of it's gradual death;
no, I reconstruct the day out of a fragment,
the stalactite from the silver of salt,
and the great god out of a spoonful.

What it taught me before, I keep. It's air
ceaseless wind, water and sand.

It seems a small thing for a young man,
to have come here to live with his own fire,
nevertheless, the pulse that rose
and fell in it's abyss,
the crackling of the blue cold,
the gradual wearing away of the star,
the soft unfolding of the wave
squandering snow with it's foam,
the quiet power out there, sure
as a stone shrine in the depths,
replaced my world in which were growing
stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion,
and my life changed suddenly:
as I became part of it's movement.

Need I say, this weathered plank and broken shell returned home with me

"Among the things the sea throws up,
let us hunt for the most petrified,
violet claws of crabs,
little skulls of dead fish,
smooth syllables of wood,
small countries of mother-of-pearl;
let us look for what the sea undid
insistently, carelessly,
what it broke up and abandoned,
and left behind us."

- Forget about Me by Pablo Neruda

More chiton shells to add to my collection

Limpets doing what limpets do.

 An ox drawn sled (made out of branches) carries fire wood home

Cows in the mist

 Fish for supper.

A misty end to the day

The  SILVER SUMMER show begins tomorrow at FILLINGDON FINE ART in PIDDINGTON, UK. Details here.  I have a few pieces on the show, including the tall story panel below.

"Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degrees of presence." - Alan Watts

NATURAL TOUCHSTONES

mrandmrscharlie on Instagram

Stephanie Dalton's new painting inspired me today. It reminds me of riverine krantzes, pebble beaches, driftwood and rock pools. 

Stephanie Dalton. Click to go to Stephanie's website

I enjoyed Stephanie's artist statement ..... and wish I had written it myself.

"It is the quieter side of the world that inspires my abstract works, the feelings that arise through a connection with the natural world. Colorful patterns in stone, aged patinas on walls, and fragmented light on the horizon are some natural touchstones for me." - Stephanie Dalton

Small wild basket by Robyn Gordon

My own work is often inspired by my connection with nature. Long walks and foraging on beaches set the mood for beginning new carvings. Once I was inspired by clumps of sea reeds that were washed up on the beach after heavy storms and decided  there and then to sit down and create my first wild basket for the few small treasures I had found. It is a very rudimentary basket but for the time I spent creating it I was totally absorbed.

"Beach Walk" a work in progress by Robyn Gordon

Beach walks have inspired many of my carvings. 

A piece from the River to Wood series by Hannah Lamb

I'm intrigued with how artists interpret what they have seen and how they bring meaningful moments into their artwork.

Hannah Lamb's " creative practice focuses on walking and making as methods of reconnecting with the world immediately around us. Personal, emotional responses to environment and surface are recorded through stitch, print, photography and construction, piecing together fragments of place and time."

Hannah's River to Wood series explores the landscape of the River Aire. 

"Short journeys, walking from home to Hirst Wood, collecting marks, prints and found materials." - Hannah Lamb

Talking about wild baskets and inspiration, I found some delightful images on mrandmrscharlie's Instagram blog.

"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web." - Pablo Picasso

Old papers and Japanese Wood by inspiration.h.o.m.e on Istagram. Love this one!

A SMIDGEN OF MY SOUL

"Creativity is the way I share my soul with the world" - Brene Brown

A lot has happened in the year I have taken off from my blog. The busier I became with commissions and life, the more I found I had less time to compile blog posts. As mentioned in a previous post I decided to simplify by posting on Face Book instead but I have missed Art Propelled! For years it was my little sanctuary where I have made wonderful friends, many of whom are not on Face Book. 

 I have decided to continue my compilations on Face Book but I would like to post here on Art Propelled a few times a month as well.

Commissions bogged me down last year. I have given a lot of thought to how they affect my work production. Through no fault but my own I took on too many commissions and didn't leave enough time in between to create new work which meant I was feeling stale and lost interest. For the first time in a long while I gave myself a month to create something new. 

This piece, "Ancestral Voices" has revived my love for creating art. I began waking in the mornings feeling excited to get out to my work bench to start carving. I purchased a new work bench made of fragrant cedar wood. The moment I set up work for the day the scent of the cedar seems to trigger my creative flow. For years I have worked outside in the courtyard where the heat just about flattened me so I made another change and moved my work area onto the veranda. Though I still do the messy work out in the courtyard I do most of my carving in the shade of the veranda. It has made a huge difference!

A very beautiful quote I kept with me while carving this piece....

"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

In 2014 Roxanne Evans Stout invited me to create a new sculpture for her book, Storytelling with Collage . The book is out! And what a beautiful book it is!

This is the piece I created for the book. It is made of fragments from my early totems, previously banished to the back of a dark cupboard. There were parts of the old totems that I loved, so I cut these parts off to use in the assemblage.

"Spirit House" was inspired by the Sepik spirit houses in Papua New Guinea, as well as the "house of the hogan" in Mali. A hogan is a Dogon spiritual leader whose house serves as a conduit for spirits to drift through while communicating with him. I was amused by the idea of a mobile spirit house that could fly or sail.... or drive over a bumpy road in Africa.

I'm not sure what the next post will be about but it certainly wont be about me!


"I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself  when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art" - Anais Nin

ART PROPELLED REINVENTED

Story Door and Niche carving by Robyn Gordon. Website here


THANK YOU to all my faithful followers who have supported me here over the years and for all the inquiring emails and messages wondering if all is well. All is well! Life has got busier however and I've tried to find an easier way to blog that doesn't take up quite so much of time. For that reason,  I've decided to reinvent Art Propelled on Face Book (here). I will post my art compilations as well as my own work there if you are interested.  Some people don't like Face Book but for the time being it is all I can manage. I do hope I will meet up with you there because I do miss you all.

Art Compilation including work by Alexey Terenin, Paul Balmer, Cathy Brennon, Deborah Bell and Annie Coe

NEW WORK at FILLINGDON FINE ART

"Strandloper III" by Robyn Gordon

The daffodils are out just in time for the opening of  the "Primary Palette"exhibition at Fillingdon Fine Art. I'm delighted to have 3 pieces in this exhibition including the piece, Strandloper III, above.

The meaning of strandloper ....

1. a member of a Koisan people who lived on the southern shores of southern Africa from prehistoric times until the second millennium AD.

2. a person who collects items on the shore; a beachcomber.

warmly invites you to  "Primary Palette" an exhibition of original paintings, sculpture, ceramics, jewellery and craft from Saturday 11th - Saturday 25th April 2015 daily 10am- 4pm at Fillingdon Farm, Piddington, High Wycombe,  Bucks, HP14 3BL, UK Other times by appointment www.fillingdon.com This exhibition features work in the three primary colours of red, blue and yellow by new and regular artists from Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa; across the media of oils, pastels, bronze, stone, porcelain, silver, shell and many others.  Monochromatic balance is added with a new collection of drawings by master draftsman Arthur Azevedo.  As always there is a wide variety on display to appeal to all tastes and pockets, and each unique, handmade piece has been personally selected to ensure the ultimate in quality and originality.  Entry is free and refreshments are on offer.  A donation is appreciated for our chosen charity Farm Africa (reg. charity number 326901). The work is available to view on our website, which is constantly being updated.  We look forward to welcoming you, and please feel free to tell like-minded friends! For directions and a map visit our Contact Us page

STRANDLOPER

The name STRANDLOPER is an Afrikaans word meaning "beach walker". It is a term for San-derived people who lived by hunting and gathering along the sea shores of Southern Africa from prehistoric times until the second millennium AD. The term has been extended to refer to present day beach combers.


While we were on holiday in the eastern cape we came across many middens. One of them was particularly old and high. It formed a bank covered with grass but a landslide had ripped the bank open to reveal  layer upon layer of shells at eye level. I did a little research and came across this post about Strandloper middens.

"... these piles of shells are often thousands of years old, and represent the last signs left by the Strandloper people, who belonged to the larger communities of either San or the Khoikhoi.... "

"The women would find some place in the dunes that was protected from the wind, and transform it into the family kitchen. They would shuck the shells and often prepare the food here as well. Pottery shards found at the midden sites indicate items of Stone Age crockery." - Chris Marais

After our holiday  I was inspired to carve a Strandloper to remind me of the blissful days spent gathering pebbles and driftwood on wild beaches.

FILLINGDON FINE ART

I'm pleased to announce that my work can now be found at a beautiful gallery in the Uk.

The present exhibition @
FILLINGDON FINE ART
Fillingdon Farm, Piddington, High Wicombe

SUMMER SELECTION 2014
opened on 31st May
and continues through to
28th June

The 300 year old beamed barn provides a modern yet historical setting for paintings and ceramics, whilst the sculptures look striking against the backdrop of the rolling Chiltern Hills of Buckinghamshire.

Meet Debs Digby, charming owner of Fillingdon Fine Art. I was lucky enough to meet Debs this year during her annual visit to Africa.  She breezed in to our home like a breath of fresh air and by the time she breezed out again I was totally under her spell. Debs takes great pride in personally meeting all the artists to discuss their art and what inspires them.  
Click for website here