FALL

International Teacher, Author, Painter and Forest Witch in Europe and Globally


 International Teacher, Author, Painter and Forest Witch in Europe and Globally

THE FACES OF ANCESTORS APPEARING IN AUTUMN LEAVES 

(60 x 42 cm)  £235

Please note that I am presenting this as a VISION - not a fact or established spiritual teaching!

Autumn is my favourite season. I always experience a huge surge of creativity and energy when the leaves start dropping off trees. One night, as I was approaching the Gates of Sleep (the hypnagogic state) I saw a vision of the faces of Ancestors appearing in those leaves being released, carried on the winds of the Northern Hemisphere. Not only my personal ancestors - there were ALL Ancestors: biological ancestors, ancestors of spiritual lineage, ancestors of affinity, animal ancestors - and so forth. In a previous art post I explained how the Northern Tradition teaches that the souls of ancestors dwell in (ancient, sacred) trees - a huge argument against large-scale logging and deforestation!! 

Our ancestors are all around us as they (sometimes) choose to ride the life cycle of leaves. Meaning that they come into form briefly, only to fade away again with vibrant displays of colour and shape. There is a profound teaching in that around accepting and transcending of Death Our Elders are never far off, not even physically! It gives the biblical concept of The Fall (or just Fall) a whole new dimension of meaning....

 BADGERING   (SOLD)

As things stand the UK government is planning to cull more than 60,000 badgers this Autumn:

"The government’s badger cull is being expanded to 11 new areas of England including parts of Oxfordshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire so that more than 60,000 badgers can be killed.

Conservation groups said the expansion was a betrayal of trust after the government this year pledged to phase out the badger cull, intended to reduce bovine TB in cattle, after a scientific review cast doubt on its efficacy.

Dominic Dyer, the chief executive of the Badger Trust, said: “The decision to expand the badger cull is a huge betrayal of public trust by the government."

ARTICLE IN FULL

My own personal viewpoint is: let's cherish and cradle (see painting) all forms of life, not flirt with even more human-caused extinction (and eco-imbalance).

I am aware that there is a wide spectrum of opinions on this matter...

 

 International Teacher, Author, Painter and Forest Witch in Europe and Globally

 GROWING ANTLERS    60 x 42 cm    £265

This painting was inspired by the deer I see daily from our house in the Forest in Sweden. There are many stories about a reindeer or stay carrying the Sun in their antlers. In a recent dream a deer appeared, carrying embryos in her antlers instead.

In the Winter of 2016 (just after we had bought our Forest House in Sweden) the Deer Mother came to me and became an important teacher and ally. Allow her to take you on a journey by means of this art video:

THE DEER MOTHER

 APPRENTICED TO SLOTHS  (60 x 42 cm)  £275

The Equinox is a time of balancing: the word literally means 'equal night', (from Latin), so twice a year our night is exactly as long as our day! 

This goes for the Southern Hemisphere too, in reversed order.

For me "balance" has meant, for years, achieving work-life balance. It is an aspiration, something I never fully achieve. Or I think I do and everything topples back into chaos...

The final touches were added to this painting late last night - but I forced myself to go to bed on time: I try to practice Sloth Medicine these days...

 

 

JOURNEY THROUGH FIRE (To Be With The Animals)   

60 x 42 cm    £325

This painting follows on from a painting I featured a few weeks ago, titled MY JOURNEY HOME. The night after I finished that I dreamed that once again my own ribcage became a spirit boat and I found myself navigating a "Sea of Fire". Then I realized how this is one powerful way of reaching out to, even being with, all the animals dying (or having died) in the fires.

Right now wild fires rage in the US (where I have many friends and colleagues I am concerned about): fires are scattered across the northern Great Plains, from North Dakota and across the United States’ border into Canada. Far to the south, dozens more fires are burning in the Mississippi River Valley in Mississippi (against right edge), Louisiana (to the west) and Arkansas (north of Louisiana).

A year ago bush fires raged in Australia. Koalas are currently listed as a 'vulnerable' species but some people are engaged in activism to getting their status lifted, in New South Wales and Queensland, to ‘Endangered.’ Are you willing/able to navigate a Sea of Fire, on behalf of our Planet?!

AS THE CROW FLIES    60 x 42 cm    £285

"As the crow flies", is an English expression that means 'taking the most direct or straight path between two points'. The idiom 'making a beeline' means the same thing.

This meaning is attested from the early 19th century and appeared in Charles Dickens's novel Oliver Twist:

We cut over the fields at the back with him between us – straight as the crow flies – through hedge and ditch.

Crows are often observed flying alone across open country, but neither crows nor bees (as in “beeline”) fly in particularly straight lines.

On my soul travels I often fly with crows (as depicted here). As Lockdown has imposed immense restrictions on travel, at the time of writing/painting I find myself avoiding London Underground but flying all over London on the back of a Crow...

THE BIRDS OF PALAMEDES

 

International Teacher, Author, Painter and Forest Witch in Europe and Globally

 

SEA THISTLE WOMAN  (60 x 42 cm)  £275

A mysterious Blue Woman carrying Blue Flowers kept appearing to me. I did not recognize the flowers so I did some research and identified them as Sea Thistle or Sea Holly (Eryngium maritimum). Its flowers are metallic blue!

Perhaps other people are more familiar with this mysterious woman than I am.

Some people pointed out that she resembles  a "blue version of the Covid-19 virus" in the way I have painted her. It was not deliberate but perhaps she offers us medicine or a pointer?!

 GUARDIAN OF THE VOID  (60 x 42 cm)  £265

This painting was created during the week of teaching my first on-line Rune Foundation Class. In some ways this image comes from the Ginnungagap (in Norse Cosmology): the Void or Abyss filled with magical powers. 

I do a lot of work with Spirit Children (as well as shamanic outreach work with the souls of children who die under extreme circumstances such as civil war or pedophilia-related crimes - please see project Healing Wise) and it was reassuring to come face to face with the Compassionate Guardian of  the Otherworld space of Eternal Becoming, the Cosmic Mother who always cradles new life and new beginnings.

 

 

THE HIVE MIND     60 x 42 cm    £225

The phenomenon of social media receives a lot of criticism and I see many people profiling its shadows (which are real!) Today I wish to highlight the Hive Mind aspect and the sense of being part of a larger network of connections. I sometimes feel like one synapse firing in a large collective brain...

And of course our social media presence is what we choose to make it....

"WHEN I SWIM WITH SHARKS, THE CRESCENT MOON IS MY DORSAL FIN    (60 x 42 cm)    £275

And don't get me wrong: I don't hate or demonize sharks - they are magnificent beings and our family has swum with sharks in the Caribbean (but admittedly not a Great White Shark!)

Please make point of finding Beauty and Poetry in your day!

 

 Shamanic teacher, painter and author in the UK and the world

FIERCE AND FEROCIOUS PROTECTOR OF ALL CHILDREN

(60 x 42 CM)  £265

The media are awash with profoundly disturbing stories and images of things happening to children in our world, right now.

Unfortunately those things have ALWAYS happened to children. Tragically it is not exactly a "new phenomenon" but we have failed to make the progress we owe to the most vulnerable groups in society (surely the benchmark of 'true civilization").

My September Session for Healing Wise is dedicated to addressing Human Trafficking and Child Sexual Abuse - please join the Healing Wise Closed Facebook Group!

 ARCHITECT OF CHANGE  (60 x 42 cm)   £245

The words: "Be the change you want to see in the world" are attributed to Mahatma Gandhi.  

In 1913 Mohandas Gandhi published a piece about snakebites that included a thematically matching passage: “We but mirror the world". 

Many voices are begging for change. The world witnesses outrage, protests, acts of immense bravery. As a mother of three children I am also acutely aware that we have a wave of passionate and talented young people coming off age.

Let's support them in being Architects of Change please!

 

 

 THE STONE BABY - LITHOPEDION  (60 x 42 cm)  £165

The concept is not due to poetic license, medically speaking Stone Babies exist:

"Lithopedia may occur from 14 weeks gestation to full term. It is not unusual for a stone baby to remain undiagnosed for decades and to be found well after natural menopause; diagnosis often happens when the patient is examined for other conditions that require being subjected to an X-ray study."

Imagine such a stone baby showing up in a routine X-ray! You can find deeply touching photographs of stone babies on the internet. I have always remembered a story about an Inuit woman whose greatest dream was to be "One of the Stone People". She collected and consulted stones, considered them her Tribe. My artist mind put both these things together and I have created a painting where a Stone Baby is return to his or her tribe: The Stone People. And perhaps the Inuit woman got her wish in death and now watches over them. Please check out my work with

SPIRIT CHILDREN

WOMB TEACHING: INTER-SPECIES COMMUNICATION AS A VITAL LIFE SKILL  (60 x 42 cm)  £265

One of my quirkier paintings! It hopes to illustrate the importance of inter species communication!

We human beings need to drop the toxic idea that "we have dominion over animals" and learn to co-exist with them in a respectful way. Animals (as do trees and plants) sustain human life on this planet, we can learn a lot from them, and we no greater right to be here than they do. Not just that: they do not poison and endanger our planet the way that we human beings are doing right now.

Fly Agaric mushrooms can bring visionary experiences and vivid lucid dreams. I do NOT recommend that pregnant women experiment with this!

For more information about mushrooms please see my art video dedicated to them:

THE UNIVERSAL VEIL

 

 International Teacher, Author, Painter and Forest Witch in Europe and Globally

 SWAN MAIDEN - LET'S MAKE IT SNOW!  (60 x 42 cm)  £275

Swan maidens are appearing in recent paintings. Over the last year a lot of references have pointed me back in the direction of the Bird Goddess. Revisiting her I see took new manifestations over the centuries (Swan Maiden, Mother Goose, the bird-like aspects of Frau Holle and Perchta etc.) In the Norse poem Völundarkviða, Wayland Smith and his brothers marry valkyries who dress in swan skins. The swan maiden is a mythical creature who shapeshifts from human form to swan form. The key to the transformation is usually a swan skin, or a garment with swan feathers attached.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN GOD OF MAGIC

(Whose Name Remains Unknown To Us)

Painting inspired by a delightful book titled: "From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt" by Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (27 July 1857 – 23 November 1934) , who was an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient Near East.

Well worth a read!

Shamanic teacher, painter and author in the UK and the world

 

TELL ME HOW TO GROW UP  - SUNFLOWER PETROGLYPH!  (60 x 42 cm)   £245

Created with a nod to all the young people who have been forced to grow up too soon, by a brutal pandemic exam year that has not treated them fairly on any level.

Also reflecting a comment from one teenage son recently: "Mum, there is now only one child in this house and that is YOU!" (Obviously I took that as a BIG compliment).

Did you ever grow up?! What or who are you going to be when you grow up?

 THE WOMAN WITH A THOUSAND BREASTS  (60 x 42 cm)  £255

The woman with a thousand breasts appeared in an astrology reading Susan Rossi did for me. She represents the "Cancer Moon Mother" tendency to over-give and deplete herself as she nourishes all young life around her (and all wounded creatures, given half a chance).

Through making this painting I acknowledge her but also release the grip she has had on me, for decades of my life. Thank you for all you taught me!!

THE OWL MOTHERS  (60 x 42 cm)  £245

My current obsession with owls is clear by now! I have named one full moon of the year the "Barn Owl Moon", I am "Dreaming Myself  A New Parliament" and I have created a "Birch Birth Chamber" guarded by a Snowy Owl....

This painting shows Four Owl Mothers, four women who sometimes appear in owl form and other times in human form. 

They give good council when Life gets tricky or conflicted! I invite you to connect with them!

(I might just name all the moons of the year for owls!)

 

 

 

THE WILD RIDE OF THE SPIRIT CHILDREN    SOLD

 CHILDREN ARE THE MISSING LYNX     60 x 42 cm    £325

PLEASE ALSO VISIT THE PAGES WITH RELATED PAINTINGS!