Here is an image called ‘Hare talks with the Red Flowers’
The painting to the right is autobiographical and called ‘Gathering Soul’                                        

This is ‘Garden Spirit’ 

I recommend a visit to her website where you can also find a selection of poems. Here’s one of my favourites;

BEACH ENCOUNTER

 The beach was wide and flat today

Stretched out beneath the winter sun

As I walked across reflected scudding clouds

Towards the chattering waves and gulls

And suddenly I was not alone.

‘Thank you’ I said aloud 

‘For the long years you have shadowed me’

At some times almost tangible,

And then again a merest wisp of presence

In a twilight birdsong, or the first star.

And as I speak

Into the light stretched overhead,

I am twelve years old, and we

Are pedaling uphill along a country lane.

I lead, but as my muscles strain

I feel the gentle reassuring pressure

Of your hand in the small of my back.

And now the wheels turn easily;

Father and child, uphill we go,

Two abreast,

Never a word needed,

To the crest of the hill.

As now, walking towards the sea,

Walking on an uphill stretch of life,

I feel that hand in the pressure of the breeze

At my back, and we are side by side again 

I’m learning how to translate images from my journeys more directly into my clay. It worries me because I want to get it right – but in many ways I’m only doing what everyone else is doing for where else does inspiration come from, if not from the Spirits?

This song is to me both camp and sublime – the words remind me of journeys I make in my mind when sitting in a forest or hill top.
The search for beauty and meaning has lead me to Shamanism and lately C. Jung’s writings on the collective unconsciousness and the archetypes.
The techniques I have learned through my studies have helped my art no end. Sometimes fully formed sculptures emerge in my mind’s eye – It is almost as if they just land there, asking to be created in clay. I know they have been waiting in my unconscious all along, and it is just a case of me recognizing them.
Below is a quote on the mysterious from Albert Einstein;
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”

The weather was sunny and windy, so perfect for getting the dustbins going!

Emilie and Guillaume pour in the sawdust

Some fine adjustment

And up she goes!  There’s more on smoke firing techniques here  and here