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Nessy Williamson’s Wild Wood Album

Nessy Williamson's Wild Wood CD
Nessy Williamson’s Wild Wood Album

I had a lovely surprise in the post recently, a CD of the album Wild Wood by the folk singer Nessy Williamson.

Nessy had contacted me asking if I could create some artwork for a CD cover. I said I was happy to, but she could also use one ofthe illustrations I have already drawn. She chose the above picture of a woman beneath a large spreading tree from my little zine/booklet If You Are Lost You May Be Taken. I think the CD looks great.

And so are her songs, they’re so lovely!

Nessy has a beautiful voice, accompanied by her guitar playing and other instruments like the shruti box. Her songs are about the natural world, the seasons and change. Wildlife is profuse; we hear of blackbirds, kestrels, hares, unfurling leaves, berries… There’s a wistfulness about the songs – a longing for what’s leaving or has been lost – that they share with the English Folk Tradition, but there’s also a celebration and joy.

Nessy lives in the North Yorkshire Moors. As a child she sang in a choir, which began her life in singing and music. In her teens she found a second-hand guitar, accompanied by a basic chord book, in a junk shop for a fiver and learnt how to play. In the 1980s she listened to bands such as Chumbawamba and musicians like Bob Dylan, Donovan, Simon and Garfunkel and Joan Baez, and taught herself to play along with them. Introduced to the folk band Planxty one day, Nessy knew she had discovered her genre and set about learning all she could about their music. Folk music is timeless, Nessy says, as it’s about the same human struggles that repeat throughout generations. She loves to hear the protest songs of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Billy Bragg and, of course, Chumbawamba and is always listening out for new music that touches her soul.

You can buy the album, as a CD or digital download, from Bandcamp. Highly recommended.

Nessy Williamson's CD
Nessy Williamson’s CD, Wild Wood
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Nightjar Tea Towel/Wall Hanging

I’ve created a screen printed tea towel, using my Nightjar illustration as it’s one of my favourites.  I’m pleased with how it’s turned out. It’s 100% natural, unbleached cotton and makes a lovely addition to the kitchen.

Nightjar tea towel

Tea towels like this are quite ink heavy on the printed side, making that side less absorbant than the unprinted side.

Researching tea towels I discovered that they were originally used to keep tea pots warm in the 18th century, hence the name ‘tea’ towel. Tea towels are made of either linen or cotton, whereas dish cloths are traditionally made of terry cloth, which is a woven cloth with protruding loops that can absorb a lot of water.

Nightjar tea towel

Later on, by the 19th century, tea towels became more decorative, especially with embroidery, and were often given as gifts by ladies to ladies. In the early 20th century some people called tea towels glass towels, using them to dry and polish glass.

Nightjar tea towels

Tea towels can be used in all sorts of ways – for drying dishes, as a decorative wall hanging, a tray cover, bread cover, cheese wrap, place mat or napkin – whatever you like.

Nightjar Tea Towel is available in my website shop here. Other products with this nightjar image include a greetings card and notebook.

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A New Altered Sketchbook and Notebooks

I have a new altered sketchbook that I’ve called The Badger Wood. I’m back into woods and all the wonderful, intricate textures and details I love about them.

I wanted to work in a sketchbook this time as I didn’t want to have to stick extra paper into the book as I do with a hardbacked, secondhand book. I can see the appeal of using old books and the surprise of finding the magic of original papercut illustrations inside, but with this one it’s all a bit tidier.

The Badger Wood Altered Sketchbook

As usual there are six illustrated pages each side of the central spread and as the title suggests, there are trees, badgers, a deer, lots of brambles etc as you go deeper into the book and into the wood.

The Badger Wood is available in my Etsy shop where you can also see a video and some inside pages of the book. It’s also now added to my website shop.

I’ve also created some new A5 notebooks using illustrations from my Goddesses of River, Sea and Moon bookWater Goddess Yemanja and Moon Goddess Hina – and another more recent illustration, Waiting for Rain.

Moon Goddess Hina A5 Notebook. Hina is a goddess of the Pacific islands like Tahiti. She is depicted here beating tapa tree bark into cloth.
Water Goddess Yemanja A5 Notebook. Yemanja is a goddess of rivers and the ocean. She originated in West Africa. Here she is depicted wearing a dress of seven skirts.
Waiting for Rain A5 Notebook.

Each notebook has different coloured inside pages. Water Goddess Yemanja notebook has 80 light blue pages, Moon Goddess Hina notebook has 80 lilac pages and Waiting for Rain notebook has 80 cream inside pages. They’re also available in my Etsy shop.

I’m pleased to say that my Waiting for Rain illustration has been included in the lovely 2024 Earth Pathways Diary along with my Forest Angel picture:

I’ve had enquiries about possible art prints of these two images. Contact me if you’re interested in A4 prints or prints of anything else on the website.

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New Zine/Booklet

I’ve created a new zine/booklet titled ‘If You Are Lost You May Be Taken’. It’s different from my Night Wood booklet in some ways, although both have 16 highly detailed, illustrated pages of my pen and ink illustrations. It is an illustrated book version of a piece of writing that featured on the RTE Irish radio programme, Keynotes, a few years ago.

If You Are Lost zine

The piece was written as a sort of response to David Wagoner’s poem, Lost and loosely inspired by the myth of Daphne in Ovid’s Metamorphosis. I like to describe it as a strange, poetic tale from the forest, haunting and the stuff of dreams.

Pages from my If You Are Lost You May Be Taken zine.

The booklet/zine is now available to buy in my Etsy shop and soon on my website shop.

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A Woods Person, a Sea Person

I have moved. I have moved town and I am now even closer to the sea. To chalk cliffs, gulls, pebbles, the coast. It doesn’t call me, I am here. I try to belong. Something tells me I should belong. It says I used to belong. Once I was a sea person dreaming of selkies – all water and flow, the rush of the tide, mudflats, sand prints, seaweed. I had a small vision of myself as one with the water, decked in weeds or a ship with open sails caught in a seaward breeze. I daydreamed of the sunken, the deep, of shipwrecks.

But now, I’m not sure. I waver in the winds of uncertainty. If I was once a sea person, I guess I still am, but I can’t quite access that part of me right now, even though I try.

Chalk Cliff

I am here, witnessing. The sea is here, is there, the blue wash, the forever waters, so close. But I am awkward in its presence. Gleaming white rock looks at me as I shyly behold it. I should belong, chalk woman that I am. And yet my dreams are still with the trees, with the wild wanderings of woodland. I am missing the deep, wooded places, the deep, green, lush spaces in dappled sunlight. And deer.

Moving in Rock and Memory

The sea I once was, now I am the land, desired by earth, dust, the intimacy of vegetation, of leaves. I pine for the scent of chlorophyll, for the moment I notice a dronefly caught hovering in a shaft of sunlight, memories of fungal gloom, the wood at dusk.

And the sea – there – it washes on forever. How can one contain forever? How can one contain the sea…

And now I have a faint desire to refind that missing sea fragment of myself. I can contain the trees, the forest, in books; but I cannot contain, cannot fathom the sea.

It has returned – as ideas, desires, dreams often do in some future time. So often these dreams come once the desire has passed in my life and I have moved on and it doesn’t matter any more. Things happen so slowly. I fear to dream because in decades time the Summoning, the Reckoning, when dreams or desires become manifest. But oh, so late. I fear the wheels turn too slowly, planets circle too distantly and I barely cast a glance at a past desire, which is now just a cinder. I wish it wasn’t so – and yet, better that dreams come true, become manifest, than nightmares. I will not think of those.

Tonight is the day past the Dark Moon. I’ll cast my thoughts to a star studded sky hanging over my sea, as it is now my sea. It is here and it is there, so close. I am here and almost there with it, trying to piece together that fragment of me that has now past and is hidden, caught within the forests in my mind, but, hopefully, not lost.

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Escaping to Temperate Rainforest

At the end of June we went down to south Devon where we stayed at the truly lovely Hearth Retreat in their little Apple Wagon.

At the Apple Wagon
At the Apple Wagon

It was so peaceful, roaming the fields and woods I was in my element. I just happened to be reading The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole – as I am a lover of all rainforests – so it seemed a good idea to visit some temperate rainforest in East Dartmoor National Par, as mentioned in the book.

The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole

Temperate – or Atlantic/Celtic rainforest as it is also called – is characterised by trees, often sessile oaks, bearing all sorts of epiphytes – polypody ferns, lichens, mosses, pennywort. The trees literally drip with verdant epiphytic life. Like all rainforests they receive a lot of rainfall that creates rich, moist, tangled layers of lush vegetation that I find incredibly beautiful in dappled sunlight.

We’ve visited smaller patches of rainforest in Wales in the past, but this area in Devon struck me as being more extensive and rich. Nothing beats a river flowing and muttering over rocks in a forest. Here it’s the River Bovey.

Temperate Rainforest
A tangle of ferns, mosses and trees with the river just visible below.

When we returned home I decided to work on another rainforest altered book, but this time of a temperate rainforest. I’ve featured an otter – they visit the River Bovey – a couple of stoats, a pied flycatcher and a jay among the ferns, moss, lichen and rocks.

Temperate Rainforest Altered Book
Temperate Rainforest Altered Book

Once again forests feature in my art. Like the author, Jay Griffiths, forests and woods make me happy. Temperate Rainforest Altered Book is available in my Etsy shop and in my website shop.

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A Dragon Encounter Altered Book

A Dragon Encounter Altered Book
A Dragon Encounter Altered Book

Twilight seeps through old, gnarled trees. The quiet is broken by a whisper as sparks of flame ignite; there is a fire aglow deep in the forest this night of the full moon, this night of the Dragon Moon.

Listen. What do you hear?

– A baying of hunting dogs far off; the muffled hoot of an owl; the plaintive sigh of a sleeping tree as it slumbers deep in time, ready to awaken, ready to rouse, ready… but not quite.

Wait, while the moon hangs potent and heavy, casting indigo shadows over the castle ruins, something else stirs. On to a mound of rocks climbs an old man, silvered hair and beard shimmering in the light of moon and flame, a whizened wizard of a man.

It is happening.

Suddenly the flames roll into a ball of fire and into the flames the old man raises his arms. In a powerful explosion of light, he brings forth a great dragon from out of the ether, broad as comet, sinewy as snake, as vociferous as any monstrous beast of night. This is the beast of the full moon, unleashed. This is it. This is it. A cry resounds throughout the forest. The awakening has begun…

An altered book commission now off to its new home.

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New Items in my Shops

To start the year I’ve added a few new items to my Etsy shop and website shop. First is another papercut concertina card, In the Hedge:

In the Hedge Concertina Card
In the Hedge Concertina Card
In the Hedge Concertina Card back
In the Hedge Concertina Card – back
In the Hedge Concertina Card - front
In the Hedge Concertina Card – front
In the Hedge Concertina Card - back
In the Hedge Concertina Card – back

I love crouching down and looking into hedges. Often I see birds skulking among an interwoven tangle of branches and leaves of various species. I love leafy detail :) To capture this view I papercut two holes in the card that frame a dunnock’s nest. Dunnocks choose to nest quite close to the ground and are often found in gardens.

When our resident fox visited our garden during daylight hours, we would sometimes find it curled up and tucked beneath a cotoneaster bush. I decided to put a sleeping fox on the back of this new card along with a magpie. It’s interesting that magpies have a special relationship with foxes, often following them about, possibly to benefit from any morsels disturbed by a foraging fox.

I have a few new sepia wildlife cards using images from my Into the Woods calendar. They can be bought separately or as a set of five.

Sepia Wildlife Card Pack
Sepia Wildlife 5-Card Pack

Finally I have a couple of new prints including Night Vigil, which is also a C6 sized greetings card.

Night Vigil A4 Print
Night Vigil A4 Print

I recently listed a new altered book, but it sold very soon after listing. Anyway, here is a photo of Still Deer Moon, that has gone to a new home:

Still Deer Moon Altered Book
Still Deer Moon altered book

I’m working on a small altered sketchbook that I’ll write about soon. I have ideas for more… meanwhile,

Wishing everyone a lovely new year!

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The Shed Rainforest Mural

Shed Rainforest Mural
Shed Rainforest Mural

I mentioned in a previous post that I was painting a mural in the shed at the bottom of our garden. Kevin erected the shed in September last year with salvaged wood and an old shed/treehouse given by a friend.

This spring I set about painting a rainforest mural inside.

My rainforest is a dream forest based on a Central/South American rainforest as it features a jaguar, anteater, toucan, parrot, heliconia flowers and a hummingbird. It also features a Spirit Guardian, a blue woman emerging from the leaves, one of my blue women. I had intended to continue painting a rainforest scene fading into night, but when I found out we may need to move house, I decided to leave it as it is.

My neighbour downstairs said it reminded him of childhood hideaways. Child like or not, it became my little retreat for a while. It was like being in a birdhide listening to the robins that visited for food and fed from my palm, the tits and the resident blackbirds singing from an elder close by while squirrels busied themselves overhead, quite oblivious of me.

As I painted I couldn’t help but overhear my neighbours’ conversations and it was very pleasant hearing the woman next door singing a song that I recognised and later looked up; Erbarme Dich, mein Gott, JS Bach: St Matthew Passion.

Channelling my inner Rouseau - a postcard of Rouseau's The Dream
Channelling my inner Rouseau – a postcard of Rouseau’s The Dream
Anteater - shed mural
Anteater on the right-hand side on the inside of the shed.
Rainforest mural in shed
The left-hand side of the rainforest mural inside the shed.
 Shed Rainforest mural
Shed mural showing the Spirit guardian of the Rainforest

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better”
Albert Einstein.

Quote in Amharic
From the forests we came, to the forests we return.
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Sketchbook Ideas for New Projects

When I went on holiday to Hvar back in September, I took few drawing materials with me, just a small sketchbook and my Art Pen. I made a few drawings and I’m wondering where they will take me:

Sketchbook nymph drawing
Sketchbook – woodland nymph drawing.
Sketchbook – The Earth is Dreaming.
Sleeping in the Forest
Sketchbook – Sleeping in the Forest

i’m thinking of creating a new booklet/zine that includes some of these images and more to be drawn. I want to journey into a dreamscape of mythical figures – nymphs, women of the woods, mystical beings – as I have been inspired by goddess myths in the past. I have Ovid’s Metamorphosis to dip into and I’m curious about the Ancient Greek mystery cults like the Eleusinian Mysteries. I’m also interested in exploring folktales and stories once again, perhaps creating one of my own.

I have loved the work of the artist Flora McLachlan for quite a while, her etchings, collagraphs and, more recently, her paintings. Some of her work reminds me of one of my favourite artists, Samuel Palmer – there’s often a crescent moon or moonlit shadows. I like the darkness, the dream-like quality and looseness of her style. So much about her work evokes night in all it’s ambiguity.

Cards by Flora McLachlan
Cards, Under the Yew Tree and Moonrise by Flora McLachlan – in their cellophane wraping.

In her more recent paintings, I like her figures in the landscape – she becomes the figures in her paintings – or rather, her figures become representations of herself; she embeds herself in the lush landscape of her home country, Wales. To use her words:

“From the time when the undergrowth reached over my head, I have been fascinated yet at home in this weedy, sappy place, this path-frill, this edge-land. Among the stems are striped snails and jewelled insects, sharp shadows and sharp, green smells. Now I am only waist-deep in this greenness, I am half human half wild, a weedy mermaid; it’s a place of transformation, shape-shifting and wild imagination. I can enter this magical world at will, loop myself with goosegrass and move empowered through the dew of every morning.”

(Taken from the catelogue of Spellbound exhibition at the Sarah Wiseman Gallery.)

Perhaps my figures in the landscape are versions of myself, i’m not sure. What I have done is try to lose myself in the leafy greenness of my home place through movement, to feel at one with it. I have gestured and dialogued with birdsong. Here is a short video I made back in April:

I wondered about how I might see myself in the landscape. Where do I feel most at home? In what landscape do I belong? In the woods? It is not here in the rigid walls of the city. Or is it? When I lean out with feelers to connect with nature I confront walls and pavements, tarmac and SUVs.

Back to artwork. If you’d like to check out Flora McLachlan’s work, she has some etchings and/or paintings in the Mythical Landscapes exhibition at the Twenty-Twenty Gallery or see her website. I’ve also watched some very interesting Youtube videos with her talking about her process, including this one.

Some of the drawings I’ve made since returning from holiday include three pen and ink pictures, Night Vigil, Goddess of the Harvest and If You Are Lost. I might include one of them in my new nature/myth booklet, but in the meantime they’ve been sent off to Obsidian Art for their Once Upon a Time exhibition:

If You Are Lost
If You Are Lost – pen and ink.
Demeter
Goddess of the Harvest – pen and ink. At the turn of the year, from summer into autumn.
Contemplation
Night Vigil – pen and ink and watercolour pencil.
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