Magic ever deeper
There is gentle rain outside, and the light breeze of autumn cool. I have a cup of chamomile and spearmint tea in hand, and a heart full of joyful anticipation at all the paintings in my head just itching to become reality. Fur thick enough to plunge your hands into. The scent of night blooming florals. Tiny shifts in colour of wood. Teeny tiny talons. The pattern in feathers. Moss and lichen and depths of dark, the smell of trees as old as time.
I don't try to create completely photorealistic artwork, (but more power to those who enjoy that, it is all so beautiful), my intention is to deeply observe and honour a creature with as much love and life as I can. Our more-than-human kin, held in heart and mind. Conversations while falling out of my pencils, my paint brush, the pigment interacting in ways that is pure magic, truly.
I want to really see them, I want to know how they may feel to touch, how having wings might feel. I want to make an offering to their personhood, to say 'I see you' with deep reverence and empathy. I want my work to look like the pigment scratched across paper and panel that it is - I want my hand to be seen in my work, for it to be a tiny piece of me in there too. My thoughts and feelings etched in with pigment and wax and oil and a heart full of wonder and curiosity.
This work is an act of reciprocity for me - so many of these amazing creatures I will never see in their natural environment, but I can learn more about them and honour their being in the best way I can. I have been diving deep, and finding that the deeper I dive, the further down I want to go. It is like the old adage that the more you know the more you realise you have left to learn. And how powerful is that? How thrilling, terrifying, magical and utterly wonderful. To be open to an insatiable lust for knowledge, to want to learn and experience and practise and learn some more and grow. It is all about growth, ultimately, isn't it.
There are so many creatures and nowhere near enough hours in the day, and already my list of who will be honoured next is a mile long. And with each new creature comes all their kin - a ring tailed lemur falls out of my pencils and suddenly I need to learn more about and honour all the different species of lemurs. And birds of prey? I only just discovered there are Caracara and now I know there are 11 species, and each of them divine, and I want to honour them all! I want to see them all, I want all of them to be seen.
It feels urgent - there’s not enough time. Not enough time to pay my respects, not enough time to revere them, not enough time for them to continue to share this gift of a world with us selfish humans. But stop, Natalie, and breathe. And write lists. And add to those lists, but continue to breathe. And pick a creature at random, and give an offering to its incredibleness, and then do the same for another, and feel wrapped up in the enchantment of the natural world of which you and I are most definitely a part.
Your blood is mostly water.
That water was once too deep beneath the sea for sunlight to reach.
Yet it knew wonders down in the crushing black.
Living constellations of bioluminescence.
It knows wonders still, thundering with the dark drumbeat of your heart.
You are nature.
This creative process, this act of creating offerings and honourings to the wild, has brought a deeper, more magical sense of connection than I could have dreamed. It strengthens with time, it matures, braiding in deepening empathy, compassion, awe, wonder, and sadness. It brings me solace and joy, but also grief at the vast human disconnect that is happening the more and more our population, industrialisation, and technology grows.
The more stressed I become, the more wrapped up in my own concerns, financial or other woes, the more disconnected I become, and it is only when taking a moment to observe a wild birds, leaves in the wind, a verse of poetry about the wild, that I remember who I am, who I am irrevocably bound to, with whom I share breath and DNA and the beating heart of life, and of what it actually important.
The reflection of the wild sky seen in a wild owl’s eye, mirroring the reflection of that same great, protective, sky in my own.
The red thread of connection, deeper than words and dreams.
Magic, ever deeper, ever deeper still.
Painting of the week
The Great Grey Owl (Strix nebulosa) is the world's largest owl in length, living exclusively in the northern hemisphere. Their body plumage is immense, hiding a sweet little owl body under a volume of greys and browns. But it is their facial disk that I am so enamoured by - those pale yellow eyes, and the rings that resemble a cross cut of a tree - as though they carry the forrest with them everywhere.
This original artwork is 11 x 13.75 in (28 x 35 cm), and comes with a protective mat for safe travelling from my home to yours. A coloured pencil piece, there are untold tiny strokes of pigment laid down on this 100% cotton smooth watercolour paper laid down over 50+ hours of work. A quizzical turn of the head, all swaddled in layers of cool blues and warm browns. Impossibly grand, dignified, imposing. Stately feathered nobility, is as interested in you, as you are in her.
Around their wreath of darkness, the leaves of the world unfurl.
The name of this piece was inspired by the poetry of Mary Oliver, who wrote many words about owls, their at once mysterious and wholly grounded nature, and connection to all facets of the web of life.
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