art for wellbeing

Nomadic Welsh Travels

Art, art for wellbeing, nomad life, Sketchbooks

‘Hiraeth’, biorhythmic health and drawing

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.

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A bientôt and hwre ‘wan!

Bye for now!!

You can read all my writings on Substack here

Feeling Compressed and Details of an exhibition I am included in.

Art, art for wellbeing, Sketchbooks

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.