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Category: the sensual figure
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Ode to Michelangelo’s Libyan Sibyl
Nothing pleased me more than remembering the passion I share with Michelangelo for bodies and muscles. As this wonderful character…The Sibyl of the Libyan dessert…daughter with Poseidon and Zeus’s blood running through her….Painting this I felt as if I were sitting alongside the old master…I shared my works of progress with a dear friend of the craft. He marvelled at how fast I was attacking the canvas. I don’t take much time in planning, plotting, paint mixing…nothing really matters once I have momentum. I flow along in whimsical ignorance of the proper ways to paint. I enjoy breaking rules and not approaching things the same way every time.
As an oracle reader myself, I feel as if I am reclaiming her. She is MY story. Not a church story or a footnote for God (or the Gods). She is a whole lineage, a river of stories and talents that seeped into my own bones. Her gifts found roots in my heart. Oracles are greatly misunderstood, I could write a whole novel about it. But hear me now, the purpose of turning to an Oracle is not to ask how the seas will be as they carry you to your destiny…no no…they are to tell you of your own navigational brilliance and blunders. How to truly see yourself as you are and how you aim to be. The rest is up to you.
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Animals Within- Humming Bird Woman
I have a real strong love of birds. Especially hummingbirds, I mean those feathers are just the most flashy fantastical feature of the natural world. Prismatics are nature’s fireworks. And my love of connecting symbolic attributes to human forms…here’s where it get interesting. I know that we soar. We fly over situations, we rise above our fears and hubris, we sing and flock together. And those wings are there just as real as the love I have for our unbreakable spirits. What attributes do you love to dream up metaphors to?
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Venus
One thing that’s quirky about sharing the art online is you, the viewer, have no sense of scale. This whimsical floaty figure is about 10 cm big…or shall I say small?
What I like about it isn’t the way she looks as much as the way I feel when I look at her…and the way I think she may be feeling. Complete bliss. Completely inside herself.
In sky wisdom, a person’s Venus placement represents the expression of desire, how passion is expressed, what is valued, and how pleasure is experienced. It’s also about relationships and how we love. -
Upcoming show all about relating to the body
Hey sweet one. I’m proud to say I am on a healing journey involving loving my body. Unconditional love. How radical is that? Well it is for me, because all my life I’ve felt the urge to FIX MY BODY, it was always too fat in my opinion. Doesn’t help that doctors also told me to lose weight EVERYTIME I went to the doctors no matter if I were there for a related to weight issue or not. Anyway the point of my story is that through the journey of radical self-acceptance I am now able to draw self-portraits. As an artist, I can tell you it is a GREAT AND IMPORTANT challenge to do self-portraits, they are a great exercise in subject/object perspective switching, great methods for processing how you feel about yourself, and an awesome story-telling tool. But I have always struggled with self-portraits because I saw myself as deeply flawed. I have always like my facial features and my boobs but NOTHING else. And now I love it all because it IS ME. It houses my spirit, it allows me to move through this world, it carries me and it carried my child…it is a vehicle for intense sensual joy and erotism…I mean it’s my magical wonderful body!! And now I’m doing a whole show with about 25% self-portraits in it! I. am. floored. And so excited to invite you to that show, you may have noticed the previous blog post, that’s my flyer. How cool is that?
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What exhibiting my art has done for me
Oh my goodness. In 2021 I started showing my artwork to the public. I haven’t done this since I was a teenager. What took me 20 years you may wonder?? Well for one I was terrified of rejection…also one gallery owner said my work was GOOD but “it wouldn’t sell here in this suburb so I really can’t show it”…also art school studio critiques KILLED my confidence. So I just never showed my work. I said “I’ll get the overies/bravery for this when I’m an old lady and couldn’t care less what people think.” Man I’m glad I met Rosa. Because she has this gallery space now, The Peace Palace…and she really encouraged me to show the work. The combination of her being my soul sister and huge believer in me, and her pure desire to see me grow gave me the COURAGE to just go for it. I was in safe hands. And my goodness did it feel amazing to treat myself like a real artist again. I promoted the show, I made artist statements, I did a live feed of the show for those in other countries..I mean I am just so much more solid in the fact that my art is worth sharing. What a game changer this is. So, I urge you creative souls reading this…be brave. Who cares if someone won’t get it, because someone else will and you will certainly be wiser and bolder for having put yourself out there. You get it babe. Get it.
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rectangle in a square world
My title is just a woe-is-me moment over the fact that the post preview image is in a square format! How I wish I were a digital wizard.
This bodies drawing was one of the first pieces of art I made when I decided to settle in New Zealand. I had spent the last 4 months traveling through Australia and had landed in Aotearoa with a feeling of pulsating sureness…I was home. But I had a lot of shedding of old selves to do. This was a premonition of all the transformation to come.
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For Emma
As a full time worker and mama, making time for my art usually comes in the form of making things for special people on their special days. For her 30th birthday my friend Emma got this huge original art birthday card. Lots of fun to make, trying to capture her exuberance for life and new found home in NZ.
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the dancer
To be alive and to delight in the sensual…to be liberated and free to know what pleases you. This is the dance with pleasure.