A Walking Meditation

A CURIOUS WALK, again in 2015

I walked a circumambulatory journey around my island home. A walking meditation with attention for the love I feel for Salt Spring Island and the precious Earth we inhabit.  I write about this walk in my April blog 2012. Five years hence my remembrance is curious. I had the thought that this undertaking be a grand walk the length and breadth of Salt Spring on main roads, forest pathways, coastal  beaches and through main villages. I surrender to however long it takes.  I walk an average of 2 hours each day ultimately covering over 150 kilometers. I begin each walk where I left off marking my place with prayer flags and blessing the walk with gratitude for each experience . I see this walk a pilgrimage, one of many in my life.  Curiously

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Painting where the veils are thin between imaginal and real.

Newsletter December 2014

I am a storyteller.  From travels and dream I draw on characters that guide me to lands real and imagined.

My north light studio cantilevers over Ganges Harbour.  The  bay is a constant thrill of bobbing boats, sea planes coming and going, fishermen hauling crab nets as gulls swirl, dive and play in the fragrance of briny morsels.  Today the water is a platinum jiggling jelly.
Last night the sea an awareness……
The wind howls and slaps waves against the rocky shore below.  A star filled heavens blink, nod and carry me to DreamTime of other velvet nights pricked with thousands of stars.  I lean over boat rail to view a mirrored reflection of the cosmos a swirl of effervesce illuminates the aqua radiance.  Bear comes to me.
I have received many bear gifts, stone carvings, a bear claw, a deer skin drum with a beautiful painted bear gifted by a shamanic healer who led me on several sweat lodges.  Rereading  journals  I discover my drawings of bear and writings of

Toujour Amour

France a love affair of countless journeys over decades I  surrender to its warm embrace and paint from my heart. A year lived  in Provence.  A walk on a 1,000 year old pilgrimage path in Languedoc.  Sojourn by aqua Mediterranean to experience colour through the eyes of Chagall, and Renoir.  “Toujour Amour” is a love of everyday France. The swoon of castle tops on The Dordogne,  or a sip of wine under a gnarled olive tree.

These newest paintings are experiences, whispered secrets in fifteenth century stone hamlets it’s slate roof tops glint in evening luminescence. Stone homes burnished, ages worn brightened in each season.  Iris, wisteria, rose, a moving tapestry of life lived to fullest.

Time lost in Fairytale hamlets and deep in prehistoric caves awakens as I stir pigment and water.  My imaginings energize on canvas.  I surrender, to the breath of ancient, myth, magic.  I vision a story, a design of simplistic line, movement of multilayered beasts rendered by 14,000 year old artists on the  walls of Lascaux.

I ask what is it that calls to be painted then feel the cord of creativity, a soul lust urges me to express and sing my experience.  Energy bubbles and yearns to be repeated through the filters of my perception, this France is a toujour amour.

Magic Carpet Ride

 

In reminiscing on my two month retreat in rural France.
Much has changed.  It is me.   France became a rich dream time unencumbered with responsibilities,  set in a familiar landscape yet isolated just enough to allow my dreaming self to emerge and be my guide.

The past ten years
It has been a roller coast ride the past ten years with upheaval of homes,  illness and death in my family and friends. This necessitates a redefining of myself. In my sixties this is the crisis time I must go through to emerge changed as I am now.

As winter draws to an end with days to leave for France, our historic century old farm house is turned over to the perfect couple eager to farm with vision and youth I had lost.
We sold our Daffodil Springs Farm,  packed a few belongings and amidst a tempest freak snow storm moved into Ganges. The last struggle of our move was almost the straw that broke the camels back. We were beaten into exhaustion, stung from financial loss and literally moving through calf high thick snow to remove the last vestiges of a life we cared to keep. Our movers had to cancel as roads were impassable.

Bee cause….

Eight original flower bouquets (see all). Each  is pollinated with virtue affirmations including love, wisdom, abundance, grace, happiness, joy and beauty.

I love bees! I love flowers! There life giving pollination bless our food and flowers and sustains our earth. These queens of the sun literally turn our world around! No other species plays a more significant role in producing fruits and vegetables.

Cruising the Westcoast

Home now on Salt Spring Island after a two month retreat  in rural south west France. Paintings to complete vie for attention as we settle into our new home in Ganges.
Business updates and meetings with Leanna we hear about her busy past two months in the Gallery. Friends and family celebrations and sharing all our stories, France is now behind us, sweet memories recede and are replaced with lists of to dos.
We come to our senses and take a precious few days to escape on “DreamTime” our trawler, a Grand Banks. We sail out of Ganges Harbour with a gentle rock of lapping wavelets. Pristine beauty views so clear in every direction.  The coastline is
punctuated with sandy beaches, and rocky out cropping. Stately homes curl up with

France, as if in a dream….

With deeply held experiences while painting France, I surrender to my dreams captured from nocturnal, lucid and, the place between sleep and awake that Robert Louis Stevenson writes about in his book “Travels with a Donkey in the Cervennes”.

While on a drive to visit a dear friend in near Le Puy  by The Central Massif I view a tapestry of lush hills spotted with grazing cows and sheep. Rugged land wrinkles to a huddle of stone habitation. Deep slate stone roofs sag to another and then another, dip down then up, and like a pirouette a conical colombier, the dovecoat, the final flourish is capped with