ART AND CREATIVITY
I’ve been drawing since early childhood. I’ve explored a large range of artistic modalities; music, dance, textiles, design, writing, painting, sculpture and digital creations.
For me, self-expression through art is something heart centered; it is sacred, and intrinsically bonded to the spiritual. My artwork is an expression of the divine self, and the heart of femininity in all its glorious forms. I bring the hidden into the light so that we can see, we three can see, you me, and she. Together we can feel into the expression of the Her divine.
I am inspired by nature; by dragonflies, jungles, the micro and the macro. I love beautiful places and they find their way onto my canvas. I am inspired by the eyes of a beloved, the lips of a lover, and the heart of a soul mate.
Most often I use acrylic to explore the unseen, to paint intuitive until what is offered is revealed. I aim to explore love, transformation, spiritual evolution, human connection and the divine feminine.
Look through my pages to explore some of my work on canvas, digital images and sculpture. I’d also love you to come and join me on an adventure into your own creativity and self expression.
I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories… water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés,
Painting
Most often, I use acrylic to explore the unseen, to paint intuitive until what is offered is revealed.
I aim to explore love, transformation, spiritual evolution, human connection and the divine feminine.
All works are for sale, refer to descriptions for details.
Sculpture
I love the feel of the clay on my hands, cold and wet and malleable. When I make these sculptures, I don’t really do that much. I always say that they are a co creation with the divine spirit. This is true because I build the base and then the rest happens. I don’t start with a plan for how they will turn out, or who I’m looking to create, I simply allow my hands to do it.
Here are just a few examples of my work.
Ruby
Ruby was my first sculpture and is still one of my favourites. Ruby spent a lot of her life on the outside. She has an overwhelming love of nature and of all the people who inhabit the earth. Ruby once spent 8 days chained to a tree, and while she was protesting the logging of old growth forests, she actually found what she felt was her home high up in the canopy. Ruby is a gentle soul to whom laughter comes easily, and she is a calming influence on anyone who comes into contact with her.
Sun Worship
She is leaning her head, eyes closed, into the life giving sunlight to recharge her energies.
I can’t say much more about her because whenever I look at her, she brings me to such a state of quiet peace, I lose my words.
Delores
Delores is fantastic! She is of an age when things don’t always make sense like they used to, and where a glass or two of bubbly is sometimes too much. I made Delores as wedding gift and found that she was immediately loved by her new family. It was like adopting an extra, yet outrageous grandparent.
Delores is a scream to be around, she smokes too much and doesn’t care that two glasses of champagne send her loopy, it’s just all the more fun to her. She loves getting dressed up to go out, but her eyes aren’t as reliable as they used to be so she often gets her make up on a bit thick and blotchy, but there is no way she will ask for help. According to Delores, “the day you can’t put on your own lippy, or light your own fag is the day you should be dead”.
She staggers on her high heels and often gets her dress caught in her stockings in the bathroom, but she couldn’t care less what you think of her, she’s only here for the laughs.
Digital Art
I am inspired by the world around me and like to twist and mix it to give it meaning. I make digital images that share with the world what I am feeling, seeing, hearing or experiencing in the hope that it resonates and gives life to the experience of others as well. I use my own photography and combine them with sketches, feelings, words and journaling practices.
I also provide this as a method of graphic recording for large and small corporate groups.
More details of all types of graphic recording is available here.
Story Work
Finding your story
All of us require a way to tell the story of our own life. To remove that which oppresses us and to hold aloft our goals and dreams, those dreams which belong only to us, and those which we will strive to make a reality.
In creating and telling your own story, you are able to find the soft place from which you can recognise a growing confidence in your own sense of authority over your life. Your story becomes grounded not just in the roles you play but in the very centre of who you are. In aligning your way of being with your own personal integrity you begin to see your life as a journey in which you your heart unfolds to experience yourself in all your truth.
Why Stories?
Stories make the world go round. Stories teach us, and they help us learn who we are, and who we want to be. Stories connect us with each other, and stories invite us into the hearts and souls of those around us. But it’s more than just the story.
What becomes important is the exploration, the finding and the telling. Things change when you tell your story. You may find parts that are funny, or emotional, sad or scary, and you will definitely will find something that is friends, shop keepers, neighbours, your community. Tell your own story.
Click on a post below to listen to other peoples stories
Preview my book
Miles of Memories compiles stories from the older generation living in a small town in Western Queensland. This book is for everyone who loves stories. It is a container in which we record the histories of the elders in the small community and we hold them together, for our future. The stories that have been shared in this book connect us to one another. Even though they may not be our own, many elicit powerful emotional responses in us. Immersed in the stories of our community, we can see the world through someone else’s eyes. We can know what it’s like to ride a racehorse on a cold morning, to skin a kangaroo, to live in a far off land, or to be a runaway bride. Sharing our stories enables us to connect and empathise with each other, we can know parts of our community that may have gone unnoticed.
By sharing our stories we are able to deepen our lives together.
This collection of stories reflects on the joys and sadness’ of a lives that have been, and continue to be lived with grace, wisdom, respect and dignity.
Your Story
If I try to describe my ideas and thoughts about why I want to help you to find your story, it doesn’t sound so great. I get all fumbly and weird, but I think it’s about taking the story telling back. Someone once told me that one of the ways to know your calling is when you can’t name it, but it doesn’t matter too much, because you feel it. Well, it’s like that, I can feel this and I know that it is essential.
A while ago I read that “A child today is born into a home where the television is on an average of over 7 hours a day. For the first time in human history, most of the stories about people, life and values are told not by parents, schools, churches or others in the community who have something to tell, but by distant conglomerates that have something to sell”. This statement was made about the average American family but I don’t think we are that far off a similar reality here in Australia. (I read this in a book called “Invisible Crisis: what conglomerate control of media means for America and the world” written by George Gerbner).
Gerbner also says: “The roles we grow into and the way others see us are no longer homemade, handcrafted, community inspired. They are products of a complex and integrated and globalised manufacturing and marketing system”.
I found this particularly interesting in considering the way in which we share (or don’t share) ourselves in the world. It is true that is not our families and community telling us the stories any more, it is the people who want to sell us something. So much of what we hear these days is from people who want to sell us something, people who want us to know their ‘brand’. This is unfortunately become how we learn about things, how we know about the world around us.
Think for just a moment about difference demise of authentic freedom of expression in the face of the controlling media giants, and the cultural effect of overwhelming and often thoughtless consumerism. And then think about what you already understand (either intellectually or intuitively) about the importance of knowing our own stories, and sharing them with each other, and the significance of our oral histories. Does one of these bring a stirring in your heart more than the other? It does for me.
What I am inspired by and truly committed to doing, is bringing the day to day storytelling back to our heart, our centre. It can be hard, our lives are so busy and so full of ‘stuff’ that we often don’t get time to be quiet and listen; but it’s not impossible.
The difference here is that I want you to know your own story and then whatever way suits you, you can share that. These are the stories I want to learn from, these are the stories I want to entertain me. The stories from people just like you and I, stories I can relate to. The stories that build the foundation of who we really are, not who someone or something external tells us we ought to be.
Building Your Story
This is a process of finding and developing your story. The final outcome of this may be a written document or an audio recording. Stories can be stories of creation – the creation of who you are or how you came to be where you are. Developing your story, or that of your family gives the opportunity to share what is important to you and invites the reader / listener into your world. Not only does your story preserve your history, and your story is sacred, capturing it establishes the sacred order of your being.
Each of us have the ability to deepen our intuitive knowing
When we develop this deep sense of knowing, we can make use of it to help navigate through the sometimes stormy waters of our daily lives; use it to help is make decision that are fulfilling; and most importantly, use it to discover a path that keeps us living in a life we love.
When we learn how to hone our skills and start to pay real attention to our inner voice, we soon discover that it points us in the right direction. Developing a strong intuition and learning to trust it gives us a new way of knowing or seeing the truth without need for explanation, double guessing yourself.