Every time I take my van over the border from England back into Wales I feel my nervous system relax, my heart gladden and the sun come out in my soul (even if it’s actually raining – common in this green and verdant land). It was only last year that I began to discover I am one of many who experience the same joy, the same longing to be there and that there was a word for this very state of being – that word is hiraeth in Welsh, conveying a similar but nuanced meaning, to the word saudade in Portuguese.
Derived from “hir”, meaning long, and “aeth”, meaning sorrow or grief, the word hiraeth offers a literal translation that only scratches the surface of its layered significance. “Hiraeth is one of those words that defies translation because of its deep cultural connotations,” says Sioned Davies, professor emeritus and former chair of the School of Welsh at Cardiff University.
Often tied to profound emotional pain, hiraeth surfaces in some of the oldest Welsh texts and has lingered as a poetic burden through the centuries. In the early Welsh verses known as Hen Penillion, an anonymous poet laments the torment of this “cruel hiraeth” that breaks his heart and disturbs his sleep. Steeped in sorrow, the term is frequently understood as a mourning for lost homelands, languages, or traditions—yet it may also hold the promise of their rediscovery and renewal.
It could be because my ancestors were Welsh (I am a Williams through my family line) and I am only an hour from the border; working class, mining stock and resourceful, they moved to England for work in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution. What draws me is the countryside and the coast, the quiet, the warm welcome I always experience, singing in choirs and the communities of resourceful inhabitants. Music, birds, long views and far horizons pull me from my urbanity.
Last year I parked next to a woman who recommended me a book called “The Long Field: WALES, AND THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE – A MEMOIR’ by Pamela Petro (2023). I enjoyed it very much – another instance of hiraeth nudging up against me. The author says:
‘The Long Field burrows deep into the Welsh countryside to tell how this small country became a big part of my life as an American writer. The book’s format twines my story around that of Wales by viewing both through the lens of hiraeth, a Welsh word that’s famously hard to translate (one literal meaning of hiraeth is ‘long field’). It is also the name for the bone-deep longing for something or someone – a home, culture, language, or even a younger self. The Long Fieldbraids memoir with the essential hiraeth stories of Wales, and in doing so creates a radical new vision of place and belonging’.
Here I am on top of the world physically and emotionally. 360 degree views offering sunrise and sunset, clean air and a home amongst the skylarks. I am so high in fact that the skylarks run around me on the grass before their gradual ascent and transformation into ‘scribbling larks’ beyond where I can see them.
sunset in the side window
I go to sleep when it gets dark and get up just before dawn, I eat when I am hungry and sit and stare at the long view. Biorhythms work nicely. With enough drinking water (no facilities) I spent 5 days treading lightly.
In between the darknesses I walk and draw, practice the ukulele, sit and knit a bit or hum to myself in a Pooh Bear fashion. I write things down which seem important at the time and concentrate on presence. I ponder hiraeth once once more. I draw again.
This last trip I restricted myself to drawing in a small A6 book – an exercise in trying to capture this ‘b i g n e s s’ on a small page. It was somewhat illustrative to begin with and then became more abstract I think. A bit like my mind as it loosened over the days.
A friend, Susie, choir leader and good egg walker and chatterer joined me for three nights to appreciate the vastness and beauty. We shared food and did a lot of bonhomie!
It was cold and very windy but bright and rarified.
We love our houses on wheels!
Here is my art kit for this trip. Small, less choices, easier to dive in, less to blow away off the side of a mountain! A few gouache paints, some coloured pencils and water brushes with a tiny A6 tear off palette by Holbein (Japan).
My next paintings just moved into vast yellow skies – I needed no form as I became more formless myself, merging into the landscape. I can show those another time; hiraeth is hard to paint.
At my next park up I was on a campsite (to shower and charge up gadgets) where a couple arrived to pitch up next to me. I was a little grumpy having had the vastness of mid Wales hills to myself – but after a friendly moment of verbal interchange I discover that this woman was writing a PhD about hiraeth. !!!!! It seemed such an extraordinary coincidence – we could compare pHd struggles AND compare our experiences of a word which most people haven’t heard of but many of whom may experience – especially in relationship to Wales.
So this is where my heart and soul lie, bounded by hiraeth.
Having turned part of the garden over to wildflowers and seen significant increases in insect and bird population I am looking at the connections between these two concepts…
Exploring Enchantment: A Journey of Wonder and Connection
Enchantment is an elusive yet profoundly impactful experience that invites us to see the world through a lens of wonder and interconnectedness.
Enchantment in Art and Life
In my art manifesto, I touch upon the concept of enchantment as a means to generate new and helpful myths for the future, working towards the re-enchantment of human beings and human actions suggesting that art can be a powerful tool to reconnect us with a sense of wonder and meaning.
recent mono-print from a small project observing crows, ravens and corvids and investigating the mythology of them – this is Branwen the white raven from Wales – 2024
Literary Perspectives on Enchantment
Katherine May, in her book “Enchantment: Reawakening Wonder in an Exhausted Age” describes it as a small yet magnified wonder, a sense of fascination caught in the web of fable and memory. She emphasizes that enchantment relies on small doses of meaning and fascination, found only when we actively look for them. It is the ability to sense magic in the everyday, to channel it through our minds and bodies, and to be sustained by it. She says:
“I don’t have words to describe what it meant to play with my moon shadow. Instead, I feel it in my body, a kind of physical wonder at what is there waiting for me when I stop to notice.” p.221
This perspective highlights the subtle and often overlooked aspects of enchantment that enrich our daily lives. My personal word for 2024 to hold in mind is “NOTICE” – it’s a helpful one – it invites slowing down, deep looking, investigating effects and affects on the self and sometimes recording in images or words.
Raven monoprint – the legend goes that the crow pulled the light from the heavens to give to our world – 2024
Enchantment as a Way of Being
Sharon Blackie, writing on Substack, offers a definition of enchantment that is grounded in a vivid sense of belonging and participation in life. She describes the enchanted life as one that embraces wonder, engages the creative imagination, and is deeply embodied and ecological. It is about respecting the wisdom of the natural world, thriving on poetry, song, and dance, and living slowly and ethically. Enchantment, for Blackie, is about falling in love with the world anew and making a conscious choice to nourish our bruised psyches. Her approach underscores the holistic and integrative nature of enchantment as a way to live fully and meaningfully.
A small crow painting completed recently – integrating crows into the environment as our ecosystem – 2024
Personal Reflections
In my own practice, I find that the deliberate pursuit of attention, ritual, or reflection does not draw in anything external but rather rearranges what I already know to find new insights. This symbolic thought process offers a repository of understanding that can be triggered by everyday experiences, creating a physical sense of wonder when I stop to notice. This personal reflection aligns with the broader themes of enchantment as a means of self-discovery and connection as well as cultivating a sense of awe as I described here in a piece about drawing outside and cultivating a sense of awe.
Recent watercolour made outside recording a bird singing in a tree in Loulé, Portugal – 2024
Are you ready to embrace the multifaceted experience of enchantment that invites us to engage with the world in deeper and more meaningful ways? Whether through art, literature, or personal reflection, it offers a path to reconnect with the wonder and magic inherent in our lives and that creates meaning for us – something we all need and something we can cultivate in noticing the weeds in the cracks in the pavement and our own plants in window-boxes, balconies and gardens or in walking in our neighbourhood or out in the wider countryside if we have access to that.
Watercolour observational sketch whilst listening to the birds in our local park – 2024
Wilding and Re-wilding (a film)
I am currently researching the concept of Wilding and Re-wilding and as part of this I am looking forward to seeing the film ‘Wilding’ next week which is on at smaller cinemas currently. (Local friends I am going to the Orbit in Wellington, Telford on Friday July at 2.30 – join me!!). Wilding tells the story of a young couple that bets on nature for the future of their failing, four-hundred-year-old estate. The young couple battles entrenched tradition, and dares to place the fate of their farm in the hands of nature. Ripping down the fences, they set the land back to the wild and entrust its recovery to a motley mix of animals both tame and wild. It is the beginning of a grand experiment that will become one of the most significant rewilding experiments in Europe.
I don’t know about you but I am finding this world uncomfortable to live in, to say the least. Yesterday this was acute for me – a feeling of compression and deep sadness from thinking about the hold that big corporations have on the political sphere, freedom of speech and debate and enquiry.
The knowledge of the pain that so many people are going through, the role that hyper-capitalism and extractive growth plays in all of that and the deep lack of concern for the lives of innocent people by those motivated by power and greed is almost too much to bear.
Some people won’t even enter into any debate. It’s understandable. Numbing oneself is sometimes necessary to preserve a sense of being able to live in a more privileged world but I do feel we must face the situation, at least sometimes, and sit in the fire of the discomfort to see where we fit in to all of this by indirect complicity and think about what we can do about our (unintentional) contribution.
This interview with Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams helped me to think about my approach. She is a Buddhist priest and activist and the co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation, published by North Atlantic Books and has been bridging the worlds of personal transformation and justice since the publication of her critically-acclaimed book, Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace.
Then also yesterday I listened to Shaun McNiff talking about how art heals, the thrust of his 30 years of work in transformational potential that art can bring in this interview for Intellect, a publishing house for arts and health, particularly the Journal of Applied Arts and Health which has lots of, available to the commons, articles of interest, the editor in chief of which, Ross Prior, was my first Director of Studies in my PhD.
My own work highlights the transformational power of art making through various projects but yesterday was just one of those low, low days of compression which are fortunately fairly rare for me. The wet and cold weather has contributed I’m sure because being out in the garden or walking always shifts things on better days. So anyway I just decided to draw how I felt; sort of pressed in from all these spheres of oppression from Big Tech, growth mindset, cancel culture, suppression of freedom of speech and non-democratic inducing powerlessness.
I wish I had photographed the process but I was engrossed in it for a while, finding a flow as, unintentionally, the drawing took a shift to the positive. I remembered my aphorism that nature shows us best how to operate when making difficult decisions or feeling disempowered and realised it was a full moon as lunar symbols appeared on the page weirdly seemingly without my own direction. I ended up with a positive image of myself, or some sort of being representing me, in play with the spheres which had morphed into representations of positivity and power. How nature and we humans (not that we are separate) must unite to work in harmony to keep this planet in some kind of balance.
Anyway!!! It felt like a positive transmutation and showed the power of making art for personal transformation in a simple, direct and profound way. It lifted the mood and today I have been out planting seeds, weeding and tidying in the garden. The situation of the world has not gone away but I have spent some time facing it and can work out other strategies going forward rather than feeling so disempowered. I can meet discomfort and have ways to work with it, meditation being one of them – listen to Angel Kyodo Williams when you have a moment.
Here is the result of a couple of hours at the sketchbook:
I put it here, though it was for private work, to inspire you to think about drawing how you feel and then to see where it takes you. This made its own transformation – the picture sometimes ‘tells us’ what it needs – and it doesn’t need to transform towards the positive to be effective – the most important thing is that you have EXPRESSED something.
…and don’t think you are not good enough to draw – it’s for you to do and not to share unless you want to…
The issue of talent is the most effective defense against expression… Sit with what you already have and dream with it in a new way. from Trust the Process – Shaun NcNiff
Lack of expression becomes repression/suppression and is the root of many an illness, physical and mental. I see that in my work as a homeopath in deep listening to people.
Whenever illness is associated with loss of soul, the arts emerge spontaneously as remedies, soul medicine. from Art as Medicine – Shaun McNiff
Today I am more upbeat and feeling the interdependence of nature more and this is today’s offering:
I would love a conversation or to hear your thoughts about how you use art making to help yourself or if you would consider trying it.
Creativity is a force of nature, the mainstream of imagination accessible to all. from Imagination in Action – Shaun McNiff
exhibition news
If you are in the Stourbridge area (central England) you are welcome to attend this lovely exhibition at The General Office. It takes place between 14th and 28th April 2024, Tuesday – Sundays 11am-4pm
Here is a flyer – please do bring friends – 10 artists made 52 pieces of work over the course of the year on a playing card and they are all presented here – 520 artworks!!!
Thank you to Julie Edwards who’s concept this was and her husband John who also takes part and did so much of the design work of the posters and backed Julie up wonderfully over the course of her illness.
By now you probably know how much I like to wander about, my head full of silly songs and musings and my backpack filled with pencils, watercolours and a sketchbook.
Luckily I am house and cat sitting this couple of weeks in the beautiful Languedoc, France, staying in a tiny medieval village and enjoying some warmer weather than back in the UK. Here it is dry and around 20 degrees but as you can tell by the video it’s been pretty windy.
Today I wandered and wondered and shot a little film to show you where I walked and the gorgeous studio (of cousin John Baldwin) I come back to for working on a little bit of gouache painting. I went about 6 miles in all and then ventured out again to stand and draw in the little square.
The video gets clearer after the first few seconds – come on my walk with me…
I have peace and quiet and sole use of the house – just me and my mind. It’s always interesting what that gets up to when alone and keeping off social media mostly. I enjoy observing its monkey tricks !!
At the end of the day I went along to one of the village squares and stood to draw where I encountered an elderly man who enjoyed telling me about his paintings and a young woman called Nancy who has illustrated children’s books. So friendly – and they didn’t even laugh at my French!
France is very wabi-sabi, there’s always beauty in the nooks and crannies of back streets. Here’s my favourite example from a door today – god only knows what kind of technology this is!!
I painted this little scene from the bench by the bridge – the medieval buildings are suitably wonky enough to be painted in a gale! Afterwards the cat came to give me her autograph…
Next time I come I will bring my harmonium – it needs a little work doing to it’s coupler mechanism… a useful industry in a teeny village…
Back in the studio in the middle of the day I played with gouache – needed to use the pink to capture the chill of yesterday…
Anyway I may work into this a bit tomorrow when it’s light.
This was the original drawing I did on my knee in the hills – so far I prefer it to the painting but then that’s not complete and I’m sure I will warm up!
My greatest pleasure though is my lovely new sketchbook – a Pith – lovely smooth and strong paper and good for watercolour and other wet stuff at 200g paper. I have suddenly become a big fan of smoooooooth paper!
I will try to post some more here over the next couple of days – thank you for dropping by!!
Searching out and finding it there all the time in the slow and silent time between Christmas and New Year: finding a new direction. Not all who wander are lost….
I treated myself to a lovely Mary Fedden book for Christmas and haven’t been able to put her down. Whilst at this still point of winter where I sometimes sit in an uncomfortable art fug, trying to peer into my future art direction, I decided to look at painting, as she did, some entirely domestic items.
Having also purloined (gifted to self) some rather juicy Holbein gouache tubes and hauled myself from a mince-pie eating stupor, I played with a small painting in the manner of Fedden, only 18 x 13cm which suits this medium. It’s called ‘Julia’s Tea Light’ – still the usual bird theme, rather decorative and still using a bit of imaginative daydreaming as is my way.
I think it would translate well into a larger oil painting; when I enlarged it to print it out, the brush strokes showed nicely. I do love the way gouache paint can mimic watercolours (in the fat end of the squash) and opaque oil, all one one handy travelling palette…
… and travelling is coming up – so I am thinking I might take these materials to France in January where I am house sitting for a couple of weeks in the Languedoc (animal rights you know!) to explore the landscape and the domestic (there may be cat paintings of George and Zuzu and there are those beautiful Langedoc floor tiles!).
Then I was also thinking about how I often use my iPad to change my physical work on paper and whether I could develop some kind of studio diary in the future. I am completely inspired by the lovely studio journals of Mrs. Bertimus (I am fortunate enough to have purchased one of her beautiful paintings for my lounge) and although I can’t say that I can match her prowess in the tech side, I had a go this afternoon and think I might continue on in this way and perhaps show some here. Something like this:
Anyway I can see that it will unfortunately lead to any members of my household finding it even harder to catch my attention in the New Year, but when I am travelling I think I am going to like the combination of physical and digital. I am finding writing is an increasingly useful way to explore the scrapings from my mind which usually dance away into the atmosphere to somewhere I know not where ….
Will you join me in this diary form and follow along ? Thanks for reading – I appreciate knowing you are there. A great place to follow my posts is on Substack where I am enjoying a longer form of writing. Here is the link
If I look at most of my paintings over the last few years they almost all feature birds. Do you remember in lockdown in 2020 how we, if we were fortunate to be able to, spent such a lot of time noticing birds in our gardens and parks, the drop in traffic noise, the stillness rarified by fear amplifying their song?
During that time I was struck by the activity in the garden of the birds and I began to paint them, almost sanctifying their presence by placing them against imaginary stained glass windows. They started to become symbolic of freedom and adaptability to me. There seemed nothing freer than a bird, able to go wherever it desired, able to adapt to the buffeting of winds and forces of nature.
Two oil paintings made by myself during lockdown 30 x 30cm
What was the freedom I craved?
at first it was definitely a ‘freedom from…’ away from the city, the griminess of urban decay, away from domestic duty, peace from interruptions of children, family, spouse, responsibility, obligation,time constraints and room for spacious thinking time and epic landscapes.
then I seemed to move on and the symbol came to stand for ‘freedom to…’ a feeling of wanting to run for the hills, to the wild open spaces of Wales, to the mountain tops and valleys, to quiet contemplative woodlands with ancient trees where I could feel rooted and amongst the ancients.
eventually, as I worked through these challenges I realised that the freedom lay in my head all along, I didn’t need to do a geographical relocation, because I learned to manage a work life balance and prioritise those activities (and non-activities) that kept me sane. I can go into those another time but as I realised who I really was, the shift came and the symbol stood instead for ‘transcendent thinking.’ The understanding of who I am, what I am and what I am here for became my work and fulfilled many of the needs I thought I had. The hills, wide open spaces, mountains and valleys, places of contemplation and rootedness were all within.
Jung and Symbolism
Along the way I started to become interested in the work of C.G. Jung, the father of psychoanalysis (after Freud with whom I would have a difficult relationship!). Jung was particularly interested in dreams and symbols developing a process he termed active imagination.
Jung’s ideas fed into psychotherapy, art therapy, dance and music therapy all part of the panoply of psychological release available today. All the time the idea, for him, was to allow us to get in touch with our true self and find the senses of purpose that we all need.
Jung himself was a mystic. He filled sketchbook after sketchbook with notes and drawings which he called the Black Books, which were eventually consolodated into the most beautiful work The Red Book, or Liber Novus which he stipulated should not be published until after his death. It is filled with astonishingly beautiful symbolic watercolours. Jung was a mystic but he kept it hidden from the scientific world for fear of being discredited in his field of psychoanalysis.
A page from Jung’s Black Books which represent his visionary imagination through writing and painting reflecting on his own life as well as the evolution of a theory of analytic psychologyThe Cosmic Egg from “The Red Book” by Jung
Jung also became fascinated by alchemy as a symbolic representation of individuation, the process of synthesis of the Self which consists mainly of the union of the unconscious and the consciousness. He said:
“Only after I had familiarised myself with alchemy did I realise that the unconscious is a process, and that the psyche is transformed or developed by the relationship of the ego to the contents of the unconscious”.
Jung developed a method of assimilation of unconscious contents through their experimentation as fantasies in the wakeful state which he termed ‘active imagination’. This can be used in or out of the therapeutic environment as a journey of possible self discovery on the path to individuation or self-realisation. I have played with this approach myself through recording my dreams, which are often of birds, and making more resolved work from the dream-sketches:
Examples of my dream-sketches, ‘Dreamworks’, quick sketch later worked into, graphite and acrylic on paper, 20.5 x 15cm, 2023Dreamworks 4’, watercolour and Neocolour II sticks on paper, 21.5 x 28cm, 2023, writing in corner shows the ‘Gayatri Mantra’ which was in my mind on waking. This a mantra used in Hindu based meditation practices concerning invoking light.
Meta Thinking / Transcendent Thinking
This work has lead to further thought, for me, about the idea of being metahuman. To be metahuman means to move past the limitations constructed by the mind and enter a new state of awareness where we have deliberate and concrete access to peak experiences that can transform our lives from the inside out. I would count drawing, meditation and walking in nature as being peak experiences. Athletes and musicians often experience this state when performing particularly well. You might call it ‘being in the zone.’
Waking up, we learn, isn’t just about mindfulness or meditation. Waking up, to become metahuman, is to expand our consciousness in all that we think, say, and do. By going beyond, we liberate ourselves from old conditioning and all the mental constructs that underlie anxiety, tension, and ego-driven demands. Useful insight on this is Deepak Chopra’s ‘Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential’ much of which draws from ideas from the Upanishads and Vedanta teachings of ancient India.
This I would say could be called transcendent thinking where transcendent doesn’t mean going above, but more working alongside from a different perspective.
The combination of meta thinking, ideas of alchemy and symbolism have resulted in some interesting and helpful personal development. Combining this with study of Sanskrit texts such as The Upanishads, The Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita has made for an enlightening journey. Long may it continue!!!
… and the birds continue… more paintings
At a recent three person exhibition, ‘Sprezzatura’ with Julia Burns and Rachel Magdeburg, I was able to show some of the paintings resulting from these dreams and imaginations. They are all available to see here (they are at a very good price for a VERY limited time – let me know if you would like to purchase) but here are a few:
‘Axis Mundi’- Acrylic paint on paper – 71 x 120cm -£300‘Om Kara’ – Acrylic paint on paper – 73 x 73 cm – £300‘Thinly Veiled’ – Acrylic paint on paper – 72 x 74cm – £300
I have put the prices of these paintings here and there are more on the link page too – I unashamedly am selling these for funds for next year’s PhD fees and my travel related to drawing and painting in my beloved Campervan – a place for spacious thinking. Let me know if you would like to purchase. Postage is extra, at cost, and the work will be sent in a strong tube for you to choose a frame. Get a bargain whilst it lasts because through a gallery …. well, you know …..
Is it too much to wonder if drawing can be an act of resistance against disconnection or a political act to create unity and peace through presence, mindfulness and interconnectivity?
22 NOV 2023
This last week I was going to write a piece about drawing and the role that it can play in mindfulness and ‘being present’, but on thinking about it that was put to one side slightly and the importance of drawing as an interconnectedness with all things came up.
How amazing it would be if the simple act of drawing could be used as a transformational process to bring people and their ecosystem (that which forms a network of relationship and interdependence i.e. everything) together?
What if drawing creates union?
What got me thinking
I do a lot of my PhD research about mindfulness, meditation and contemplation in relation to an art practice. It’s always a good excuse to go out and draw anyway; justifying the pleasure with some kind of ridiculous validating argument as if I can’t just have the pleasure. But anyway, in the name of research (!) I was on holiday in Portugal last week and set myself a little goal of painting or drawing to record the trip each day as I generally do when travelling, both as a diary and as something more.
I took a little A5 sized sketchbook and a small pad of watercolour paper and carved niches of time out to use them throughout the trip.
For me, drawing in the landscape is part of a full participation in a location. I take photos, like the rest of us, but the difference between photographing and drawing is enormous.
Michael Taussig, anthrolopologist and field notes maker, in his book “I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely my own”, speaks of drawings:
“folding organically into the writing in the notebook whereas a photograph lives in another sphere altogether, with technology, lying between you and the world”.
He mentions John Berger’s thoughts, with his enigmatic notion that a photograph stops time, while the drawing encompasses it and encompassing is like enclosure. There is an intimacy that Berger finds between the drawer and the drawn, suggesting that drawing is like a conversation with the theme drawn likely to involve prolonged and total immersion. Here the idea is that the person becomes the drawing, you become so close to the object, until you are finally it as it were, the contours you have drawn marking the edge of what you have seen, but also the:
“edge of what you have become, an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event, scene, remembered, or imagined.” (Berger 2007:3)
Berger also says that drawing has something that painting, sculpture, installations and videos lack, and that is corporeality. (Berger 2007: 16).
I think mindfulness is a big part of it for me and I like to cultivate and exercise that skill when I can. Here are a couple of definitions of mindfulness:
“Mindfulness […] is generally defined to include focusing one’s attention in a nonjudgmental or accepting way on the experience occurring in the present moment [and] can be contrasted with states of mind in which attention is focused elsewhere, including preoccupation with memories, fantasies, plans, or worries, and behaving automatically without awareness of one’s actions.” (Baer et al. 2004: 191).
“Mindfulness is a process of regulating attention in order to bring a quality of non-elaborative awareness to current experience and a quality of relating to one’s experience within an orientation of curiosity, experiential openness, and acceptance.” (Bishop et al. 2004: 234).
There are two understandings of mindfulness: Western and Buddhist derived. A more Eastern-based idea of mindfulness (sati) is:
“Eastern mindfulness means having the ability to hang to current objects, to remember them, and not to lose sight of them through distraction, wandering attention, associative thinking, explaining away, or rejection.” (Weick & Sutcliffe (2006: 518)
You can see why this is a useful practice to cultivate! It is beneficial to be able to bring this skill to play in all sorts of life situations!
Benefits of mindfulness
The practice of mindfulness, through methods such as body scanning, meditation, and yoga, aims to achieve a state of “being-mode”, characterized by acceptance of change and non-attachment. (This is a confusing idea for Westerners – we can assume too easily that it has connotations of detachment which is not the same – let’s call non-attachment “caring non-attachment” instead because that is more useful). The goal is to master the mind, understand that human suffering is an illusion based on attachment to the nonexistent, and develop compassion and empathy for all beings.
Mindfulness improves mental skills and present-moment awareness by encouraging withdrawal from external factors that cause rumination, complex thinking, and emotional reactions. However, the idea of achieving a purely passive state of mind is paradoxical, as the mind is always interacting with the external environment. Despite this, mindfulness practitioners assert that the practice enhances the ability to remain internally focused and undisturbed by external phenomena.
You can see why sitting on a beautiful beach painting this on the island of Armona in Portugal can be argued for!
Mindfulness and Presence
Why are we drawn to being present? Could it be because the awareness of the body knows innately that being present is good for it?
We know scientifically that people who regularly encounter awe and acknowledge it have certain advantages.
But I got to thinking about what the present moment actually is? There is some literature about what a moment is. How small is it? One idea is that a moment is under six seconds, after which memory and prediction come into the picture.
How deep is it? Does mindfulness give depth to a moment.
What is time anyway? (time is a human construction a space time modality, actually, it doesn’t exist but that is another book – see Deepak Chopra’s outpourings amongst others!).
And what actually is presence?
An experienced moment happens now, for a short extended moment but mental presence encloses a sequence of such moments for the representation of a unified experience of presence. Whereas the experienced moment forms an elementary unit, a temporally unified percept, mental presence involves the experience of a perceiving and feeling agent (“my self”) within a window of extended presence, a phenomenon that is based on working memory function.
“Working memory provides a temporal bridge between events – both those that are internally generated and environmentally presented – thereby conferring a sense of unity and continuity to conscious experience” (Goldman-Rakic, 1997).
My favourite two authors (not academic because so much more relatable!) on presence are Eckhart Tolle and Michael Singer. I read and reread these books (see links) and try to live the ideas there.
Maybe I can think of it this way: Archiving an event
This was a little sketch from Faro – I spent an hour sitting on a bench, fully enjoying the sun, smells, taste and sounds of the market on the marina whilst making this.
If a moment is nebulous in terms of definition then are we talking about an event? Am I archiving an event rather than being present? What is an event made up of? An event has a preparation, and moment, and a memory but can also be made up of smaller moments of consciousness or awareness, which add up to a sense of being present.
How is drawing like yoga?
Honestly I don’t draw or paint in a headstand or the tree pose – that’s not what I mean!
So, recording a feeling of interconnectedness through a medium of art materials is like experiencing the interconnection between my body and mind to something which is greater than me when practising yoga or meditation. In a physical sense, I place my awareness in my body when practising yoga and sense the interconnectedness of, for example, the breath and the position of the body, of which part of me is relaxed and which part of me is tense. When drawing outside I have pockets of attention like this, both of the inside of me (interoception) and outside of me in my (perceived) external environment.
Sometimes this interconnected quality of being feels very profound. I am connected to everything, everything is my ecology. The word ‘yoga’ comes from ‘yuj’ which means ‘union’. The mindful presence of being still and receptive in drawing is like the true meaning of yoga. A connection to my ecology which of course is THE ecology.
Drawing the beach – sensing the perceptions of my outer environment, sensing the perceptions of experimenting with materials and sensing my internal state. It’s what meditation is, it’s what yoga is.
Why do I sometimes feel the need to capture a past event from a photo?
Is it because I wanted to re-capture, relive, recover that sense of awe? I can mention here two examples. The first is a drawing made in Portugal of the experience of walking on the salt flats at Olhão which was about experiencing the sense of the light rather than that of form. The sense of the light was having an awe-inspiring affect on my body.
I used a photo to remind me of the awesome experience of light in the salt flats but the painting is not at all purely representational.
The other example is the drawing made about the feeling of interconnectedness when swimming in the river at Dolanog. This went on to become a resolved painting. I will talk about that in another post. It was profound for me.
Drawing and flow state
How can drawing become an entry point into flow? Because drawing can be a form of voluntary play and play is an intentional portal into flow – more on this in another Substack too!
Sketching on an autumnal, orange ripening day in Ayamonte over the border in Spain.
If all of this has become too cerebral, how about this, as a more person to person connection arising from drawing outside last week:
Drawing and people connections
In around 2016 I met Mary Price (of Artist in the Shed on Instagram) on an art workshop in Brighton, tutored by the Australian artist Tracey Verdugo when she was on a world tour. Mary was sitting next to me during the weekend and over a Saturday night curry we made ourselves into friends, but only had an online friendship subsequently over the years, until just last year when we found ourselves in Olhǎo, Portugal at the same time. We spent a couple of happy days then out sketching together and drinking vinho verde of course!
This year she was to be in Olhǎo again at the same time as us. We organised more time to be spent out with sketchbooks and the day before we met up she had by chance encountered, in a cafe, another artist, Roz Beaver, who was travelling light around Portugal with her art materials. Over the next week or two we all bonded through drawing together, talking about art making, connections, and sharing life stories. We united through being in our true happy places, each of us connecting with our environment through drawing and painting in a deep and present way. We will remain friends wherever we are in the world through this true commonality and unity.
Roz, me and Mary – connected
So…
Is it too much to wonder if drawing can be an act of resistance against disconnection and a political act to create unity and peace through presence, mindfulness and interconnectivity?
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Some refs:
Taussig, Michael (2011), I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely my own, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Berger, John (2007), John Berger: Life Drawing, Ed. J. Savage, London: Occasional Press.
Let me know if you want the other citations – I need to go and have a custard cream now.
This week has been a full on one but it’s exciting. Two other artists in the studios have teamed up with me and we are going forward as a collective called ‘The Working Painters’. It’s a great boost to have a collaboration, and whereas I have generally worked a solitary bod I have really seen the power of working together this last few weeks. In the past we have loosely critted (is this a nice new word?) our work and thoughts together and now it’s time for a show of this year’s outputs.
Why now?
You know what? …. it’s hard to get gallery representation, or even work shown in the city art gallery where we work, and it’s sooooo easy to moan about that. So we decided to up the energy and organise a pop-up, renting the community hub which is a massive white ex-shop in the Mander Centre our city shopping mall here in Wolverhampton, England. The town is really down on its uppers, struggling to stay alive and the only thing we can do is to contribute to it with colour and hopefully inspiration for others to do the same. We want to buck the system!
Can we inspire?
We hope so – we want to show a way to beautifully curate on a limited budget to encourage others – individuals or groups – to have a go at doing the same. We are not having a catered Private View – but we are having one (!), and we are hanging in a way that others could replicate easily …. you’ll have to come to find out how.
‘Om Kara’ – Clare Wassermann – acrylic on paper – 73 x 73cm
About the title ‘Sprezzatura’
The exhibition title Sprezzatura typically means an appearance or style which assumes to be effortless but hides the endeavour involved in its creation. Many of the paintings exhibited here have been re-worked, painted back, painted over, scrubbed, rubbed, tonked, scratched, smudged, printed on, wrestled with and agonised over, and in fact the paintings often leave traces of these tussles. Some of the paintings came into being with less of a creative struggle as if not made by the artists at all. Nonetheless, the work of painting is always work, a matter of turning up and loading a brush.
The artists
In a series of new work, Rachel Magdeburg has painted objects that have a personal resonance, and obliquely reference the practice, material techniques and processes of painting. Some of the pictorial imagery reveals a semantic playfulness, which is reinforced by the painting’s titles. Other paintings explore formal relationships within a work itself, and in relation to the motifs of other paintings. Rachel has just completed a doctorate in Fine Art and she is glad to be back to painting!
‘UnPalatable’ – Rachel Magdeburg – oil on board – 61 x 51cm.
Julia Burns’s recent large scale paintings employ a continuous dialogue, both intuitive and directed, with the very messy process of painting, along with a playful reference to a “mixtape” of Modernist and contemporary abstract painting, to create works that allude to the Urban landscape as an experience and an idea.
Julia Burns’s studio.
Clare Wassermann has been working with the symbolism of birds in her paintings as part of an ongoing investigation into the concept of liberation and alchemical transformation towards internal freedom as part of her PhD work.
‘River Swimming, Dolanog,’ Clare Wassermann – acrylic on paper, 120 x 79cm.
I you would like to purchase one of Clare’s pieces but can’t get to the exhibition
There is an online catalogue here. Please get in touch to reserve your work – the beauty is there are no gallery fees so the work is affordable (subjective term I know!). The work can be purchased online and posted at cost. Framing advice is available of course.
Please get in touch if you would like to purchase work by Julia or Rachel. Better still, come and meet us and see it in person. A catalogue will also be available online soon.
You can make quite a night of it!
You can go straight on to this if you come at the end of FridayEvery last Friday of the month, the doors of Wolverhampton Art Gallery will be opening after hours to welcome you in.
Each event will be inspired by current exhibitions. Expect live performances, music, workshops and curators talks throughout the gallery spaces.
Plus, the Glaze Café will be opening late to ensure you don’t go hungry or thirsty as you see your way into the night. Lates are adults-only, after-hours theme nights.
This Friday Lates is a double feature! Friday 27th & Saturday 28th October 6-9pm.
Friday 27th: there will be screening a documentary about the life and work of Derek Boshier.
Join British-Jamaican Artist and Educator, Exodus Crooks for an ink and collage workshop inspired by Derek Boshier’s Smile (1968). Throughout the workshop, participants will be invited to recreate an image they have on their phone, using found images, magazines and newspaper cut outs.
We are happy to work to mentor artists who would like to buck the system and put on their own show. We can offer advice and encouragement. Do get in touch with me if you think you would benefit from this service in the future.
And please do subscribe to my newsletter on Substack – I will be adding to it most weeks and I’d love your comments if you like!
painting currently on the studio wall and in early stages
What is an art manifesto?
Recently I was chatting with three art friends – we meet every few weeks online and are based in the U.S, Canada and the U.K. and our topic was ‘art manifestos’. Before our meetings we usually have a subject lined up that we would like to discuss so I felt I needed to do a little research first before attempting to write my own manifesto.
I discovered that an art manifesto is a public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of an artist or artistic movement. Typically they refer to a system which, in the eye of the artist(s), needs reform – they are often a protest of the times.
The first art manifesto of the 20th century was introduced with the Futurists in Italy in 1909, followed by the Cubists, Vorticists, Dadaists and the Surrealists: the period up to World War II created what are still the best known manifestos.
Subject matter is typically the need for revolution, freedom of speech (how relevant is THAT today …. yes indeed!) and the intention comes from the idea that art is a political tool.
I like this one and am going to think about it further:
Artist Charles Thomson promoted the Crude Art Manifesto 1978.
This was posted by him in Maidstone Art College when he was a student. 21 years later he co-wrote the Stuckist manifestos with Billy Childish. Thomson was also a member of the punk-based band The Medway Poets. The manifesto rejects “department store” art and “elitist” gallery art, as well as sophistication and skill which are “easily obtainable … and are used both industrially and artistically to conceal a poverty of content.” The priority is stated to be “the exploration and expression of the human spirit”.
Childish and Thomson have issued several manifestos. The first one was The Stuckists, consisting of 20 points starting with “Stuckism is a quest for authenticity“.Remodernism, the other well-known manifesto of the movement, is a criticism of postmodernism; you can read it here …. something to wrap your head around in a moment of clarity!!
An inspiring example….
I do like this (sort of manifesto) from Richard Diebenkorn, which is clearer in terms of an intention set for a painting session. It’s called ‘Notes to myself on beginning a painting’ – it would be a useful thing to place on a studio wall:
My creative manifesto
So OK, I decided to create my own manifesto. It isn’t set in stone, I can change it and write new manifestos; I don’t want a manifesto to become a prison!! I wrote it in about half an hour because I thought the time restriction would be a way of finding my most immediate and therefore pressing values.
Here it is:
An Art Manifesto – Clare Wassermann September 2023
There is no space for the divided self, the divided people, the divided planet.
We must adopt a friendliness to the idea of the unity of all to understand that we are an ecological system of each other and to ever come to peace.
My heArt entangles with your heArt.
My heArt heals yours if I will only let it, if you will only allow.
Your heArt can heal mine.
My Art can be a painting or a form made from my hands and mind, and might evoke something in you, or something beyond you, which you might want to explore with your heart and mind.
My symbols will not be yours but they could live in you for a while whilst you entertain them and breathe some of your breath into them.
You could be willing to see if your thoughts become less turbulent and settle in some place restful but inspiring, to a still point from where action could benefit you, someone else or other beings.
My art may generate new and helpful myths for the future and work upon the re-enchantment of human beings and human doings.
I am a process.
I discover my Self by making art.
I work on my Self through making art.
I save my Self from my self through making art.
My process affects others.
I am.
I renounce expectations
I leave (hyper) capitalism to others
I nurture the growth of my soul and those of others through curiosity, stillness and the wisdom of those who have been to useful places on their journeys.
I create with the intention of disrupting the status quo, of challenging the dominant narratives that keep us trapped in old ways of thinking and being. My art is a call to action, an invitation to join me in exploring new possibilities for ourselves and our world. It is my hope that we can create a more just, equitable, and sustainable future for all, meanwhile acknowledging the beauty we can behold in creation.
I create
because
I Am
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Could I take this further?
In writing this I realised that really this is my manifesto for life. I am going to try to live up to that.
I also realised that by the very act of writing I hold myself to linear thought in a way that I can’t when just musing in my head. I can write to think – it may seem obvious to you, but I am going to work on this more and see what comes out. I also know that I paint to think – a BIG part of my life. This realisation has been important in the impetus to create this Substack as a place for longer form writing
How about you?
So how about you?
Could you try writing a manifesto?
If it’s an art one – does it also reflect your life?
If a manifesto is too difficult a concept, then maybe just try a list of prompts for a month and put them in your sketchbook, on your fridge or on your Instagram, Facebook or somewhere to hold yourself accountable in some way.
How about this from Frederick Terral at Right Brain Terrain?
Frederick Terral’s manifesto
another place for a seasonal prompt:
I love to follow the seasons in art making, symbolism, ritual and to mark them with some kind of creative act. Here’s a wonderful artist’s review tool from one of my artist friends mentioned at the top of the post, Jacqueline Calladine (her Substack is here)Let me know what you think in a comment:Leave a comment
An art manifesto is a public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of an artist or artistic movement. Many arts groups have made manifestos creating new movements often rejecting previous movements and political views in the process. A group of four artist friends of mine decided to investigate more about this subject and in turn created their own personal manifestos. Here is mine which I can see is also a reflection of my Self and how my self wishes to be:
My Art Manifesto – September 2023
There is no space for the divided self, the divided people, the divided planet.
We must adopt a friendliness to the idea of the unity of all to understand that we are an ecological system of each other and to ever come to peace.
My heArt entangles with your heArt.
My heArt heals yours if I will only let it, if you will only allow.
Your heArt can heal mine.
My Art can be a painting or a form made from my hands and mind and might evoke something in you, or something beyond you, which you might want to explore with you heart and mind.
My symbols will not be yours but they could live in you for a while whilst you entertain them and breathe some of your breath into them.
You could be willing to see if your thoughts become less turbulent and settle in some place restful but inspiring, to a still point from where action could benefit you, someone else or other beings.
My art may generate new and helpful myths for the future and work upon the re-enchantment of human beings and human doings.
I am a process.
I discover my Self by making art.
I work on my Self through making art.
I save my Self from my self through making art.
My process affects others.
I am.
I renounce expectations
I leave hyper capitalism to others
I nurture the growth of my soul and those of others through curiosity, stillness and the wisdom of those who have been to useful places on their journeys.
I create with the intention of disrupting the status quo, of challenging the dominant narratives that keep us trapped in old ways of thinking and being. My art is a call to action, an invitation to join me in exploring new possibilities for ourselves and our world. It is my hope that we can create a more just, equitable, and sustainable future for all, meanwhile acknowledging the beauty we can behold in creation.
I create
because
I Am
by Clare Wassermann (18 x 29.5cm)
Exhibition
The ‘Working Painters’ group consists of Julia Burns, Rachel Magdeburg and Clare Wassermann. We have an exhibition from October 28th-29th. It’s at the Community Hub which is a lovely large space in the Mander Centre, Wolverhampton – nearest entrance opposite Beatties.
There is a Private View from 4pm-6pm on 27th and the show is open from 10am – 4pm on the Saturday and Sunday.
There will be large and small works available to buy but we would love to see you to show what we have been working on this last year. Please do come.
Clare Wassermann Art 