Pencil on watercolour paper
77 x 56 cm (30 x 22 inches)
unframed
One day an exquisite giant moth of golden velvet flew into my forest studio, gracing me with her majestic presence. She exuded a sense of grace and timeless wisdom, seemingly existing beyond the mundane world.
Moth Wings is the second drawing in my Elementals series. I was living and working in a beautiful glass-walled barn overlooking small mountains cloaked in a blanket of forest trees with the picturesque Never Never River at their feet. One night this magnificent mustard yellow moth appeared, landed gently on my curtain, and stayed for a few charmed days.
Lady Moth seemed to exude a sense of grace and wisdom. Her calm, unhurried movements; her stately wingspan; the opulent plushness of her golden velvet cloak: all contributed to the feeling that she was an Empress of the Forest.
She seemed to exist in another realm — timeless and beyond the concerns and anxieties that can so pre-occupy us human beings. The patterns in her furry wings reminded me of a beautiful grandmotherly patchwork quilt. She was like an earthly jewel from an ancient land.
Pencil on watercolour paper
77 x 56 cm
30 x 22”
As gravity-bound Earthlings we must endure many challenges. Let’s raise our arms (like wings!) up to the star-festooned heavens in a spirit of prayer and gratitude.
Transcend represents the ability that we humans have to rise up and move beyond trials and tribulations through cultivating hope. In this unprecedented time of climate emergency, hope married with positive action are key ingredients in helping us rise to the challenge of changing our ways to preserve life on Earth, rather than sinking into despondency and despair.
Transcend is the first of my coloured pencil drawings on watercolour paper in the series Elementals. These drawings are inspired by a stunning collection of tribal and sacred art that I had the good fortune to photograph for a private art collector recently. The forms and colours respond to the lovely natural materials used in many of the sculptural pieces: hand-carved wood, in-laid Mother of Pearl, feathers, ebony, natural ochre pigments and dried grasses.
Pencil on watercolour paper
77 x 56 cm (30 x 22 inches)
unframed
This drawing burst forth in an invigorating explosion of inspiration and light, unexpectedly imbuing my otherwise blue heart with buoyancy.
I was a little heartbroken at the time and bathing in the bluer hues of the heart’s palette, so when a sparkly glimmer of hope randomly appeared one morning, it surprised me.
In an epiphany I realised I actually had a choice: I could continue to wallow in self-pity (that dubious balm of the downhearted) or I could grab this glimmer of hope and breathe life into it. I made the novel choice to to do the latter, and was amazed by how quickly it helped me rise up out of the quagmire. I was blue, but buoyant.
I realised then that whilst we cannot control when grief and sorrow will descend upon us, we might have some small say in the intensity and length of time they linger. Like most states of consciousness, even the state of achy-breaky heartache is somewhat malleable. Who knew?!
Pencil on watercolour paper
77 x 56 cm (30 x 22 inches)
unframed
Moth wings, leaves, the shape of a pear... I adore the almost-but-not-quite-perfect symmetry often found in nature.
These wings are inspired by a stunning velvety moth who had graced my art studio on the edge of the forest with her majestic presence. She had stayed for three days and spoken to me in silent, golden tones of stillness, purity and taking time to simply be.
The architecture of many insects is perfectly balanced: each anatomical part with its own specialised function that enables the creature as a whole to eat, fly, walk, sleep, sing, etc. Kind of like our clever skeletons, organs, blood and other moving, beating parts all neatly bound together inside our skin. It’s all rather miraculous, don’t you think?
Somehow this drawing echoes my cherished memory-sense of the nineteen-seventies, when I was a child and everything seemed so much more pure, easygoing, and timeless. Technology hadn’t yet driven such a wedge between us and the pristine natural world. Pollution was starting to be noticed, but climate change an unimaginable nightmare that had not yet entered the mass consciousness.
I wonder how we humans can come together as a species — as custodians of this precious Earth — and wind back the clock of environmental destruction... reinstate a feeling of relaxed timelessness that comes from not behaving in a manner that threatens our very own existence.
detail
Pencil on watercolour paper
77 x 56 cm (30 x 22 inches)
unframed
After drawing this picture I realised I didn’t actually know the story of the Rainbow Serpent. Here is a telling by Australian Indigenous artist Michael Connolly AKA Munda-gutta Kulliwari:
‘Long ago in the Dreamtime, when the Earth lay sleeping and nothing moved or grew, lived the Rainbow Serpent. Then one day the Rainbow Serpent awoke and come out from beneath the Earth. Refreshed from her slumber she travelled far and wide, leaving winding tracks from her huge body and then returning to the place she had first appeared.
‘On her return she called to the frogs, ‘Come out!’. The frogs came out slowly as their bellies were full with water, which they had stored during their sleep. The Rainbow Serpent tickled their stomachs and when the frogs laughed, the water spilled out all over the Earth to fill the tracks of the Rainbow Serpent.
‘This is how the lakes and the rivers were first formed. With water, grass and trees began to grow, which woke all the animals who then followed the Rainbow Serpent across the land. They were happy on Earth and each lived and gathered food with their own tribe. Some animals lived in rocks, some on the vast plains, and others in trees and in the sky.’
After reading this story I got goosebumps to look back at my drawing and realise that it features an abundance of spouting water!
Pencil on watercolour paper
77 x 56 cm (30 x 22 inches)
unframed
The title of this drawing reflects what this whole body of work Elementals is about: looking beyond the physical form that people, animals and plants take and into the underlying energy or life force that animates all living beings.
In many tribal and sacred philosophies, physical reality may be seen as a veil of illusion that cloaks the spirit.
In Western philosophy, we might talk more in terms of ‘soul’.
In modern science, we might speak of atoms and quantum physics.
These drawings seek to represent whatever it is that gives life to us humans and our animal friends and the plant world, and furthermore, how this energy interconnects us all, one to the other.
detail
Pencil on watercolour paper
77 x 56 cm (30 x 22 inches)
unframed
•
Dear Moon,
I would like to slumber for a month on a bed of soft, mossy grass, naked under your silvery-blue light, your now golden light... your magical light that expands my imagination and sets me adrift on a pearlescent sea of dreams.
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Dear Moon,
Please transmit your lunar wavelengths to me in some kind of Flinstones-meets-1960s-futuristic teleportation station, where the secret of life may osmotically pulsate into my bloodstream and all despair melt away.
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Dear Moon,
Your heavenly body I place, like a pearl, in my belly button where it may nestle and nurture me as I, too, nurture you. Your reflective glory, your soft and subtle manner, your humble poetry… you are my favourite celestial being.
detail
Pencil on paper
72 x 56 cm (28 x 22 inches)
unframed
emanate | ˈɛməneɪt |
verb [no object] (emanate from)
(of a feeling, quality, or sensation) issue or spread out from (a source): warmth emanated from the fireplace | she felt an undeniable charm emanating from him.
ORIGIN
mid 18th century: from Latin emanat- ‘flowed out’, from the verb emanare, from e- (variant of ex-) ‘out’ + manare ‘to flow’.