Wednesday 17 December 2014

The Watchtowers - The Watchtower of the North.

The Watchtower of the North - Life, Death & Rebirth from the Frozen Wastes.

The Silver Lady in this painting was insistent that I paint her as the Northern Watchtower and she haunted my dreams incessantly. I slept very little in this period but once I completed this painting, I did not see or dream of her again. She walks towards us but is enclosed in a golden sacred space. She is always there, always walking towards us, to protect and guide if necessary. Her hair flies in a wind that we cannot feel because her dimensions are very different from that of ours, the golden light illustrates that it is not one that can be seen OR understood by mere mortals. Her dress is see-through, reminding the viewer that where she is, material belongings have no value & although she appears as a woman, she could be any shape or colour that she chooses. In truth, how she appears is how we see her. Her eyes are deep and black, illustrating the infinite void of eternity.

All places that house spiritual beings are sacred and in some cases might be spiritual beings themselves. Here 2 angels, created from light enclose the Watchtower of the North. One is female and heavily pregnant because the form of these beings were created by human minds. They both represent the conception and birth of humankind which is both a physical and spiritual event but never an immaculate one. They are the source for the well-known phenomena the Northern Lights, which emanate from their bodies. Their wings form an arch which encloses and embodies the sacred space of the Watchtower of the North. These light-beings rise from the snowy land-scape, which represent the Northern quadrant of the Elysian fields.

Because the North is often associated with Frozen landscapes, this painting represents life, death & rebirth. The angels are like ice, fashioned by the winds of time in the likeness of humankind. They appear fixed to the frozen landscape underlying this connection; (as above, so below). They act as both conduit and reservoir and people can relate to them because they appear so human in many ways. However, they are not, they are also of the landscape, of spirit & remind us that all beings & places are sacred as well as all states of being.

The Arctic circle, where we admire and gasp at the magnificence of the northern lights, can mean death to many species that are indigenous to the area. Especially when winter is at its most cruel and bitter but there is also enchantment. Here in this sacred space of life, death and rebirth there is great beauty because these give rise to different states of being leading to a rebirth of the individual concerned. Therefore, when we feel we are immersed or even stuck in a frozen wasteland in life, we need to remind ourselves that this is a necessity for further growth and expansion of body, psyche and soul.

The grim bite of spiritual winter affects us all at some stage in our lives. As humans, we often deny that this is happening or going to occur. We try and grasp onto the blissful states of being & deny the other state, that being of death and decay. The Northern Watchtower reminds us that winter is after-all a season, all things are transient, nothing lasts forever & the most bitterest, coldest times can give rise to the most beautiful, verdant spring once we emerge, changed but strengthened by our experiences.

My work can also be viewed at:

http://www.artfinder.com/trac-davies
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TracDaviesArtist
http://www.redbubble.com/people/tracdavies
http://tracdavies.deviantart.com/
http://www.zazzle.co.uk/tracdaviesartist
https://www.facebook.com/TracDaviesArtist
https://twitter.com/tracdavies
https://www.tsu.co/TracDaviesArtist

Trac Davies - Artist ©

Friday 12 December 2014

The Goddess Within Series 1st painting.

The Universal Seamstress at the Dawn of Time.

The Goddess Within series is inspired by real women. I have always believed that every woman has an inner Goddess but it might look entirely different to how she looks in real life. I have already said that I do tend to paint from the inside out, sometimes it makes things awkward because I have a real streak of perfectionism & I like to get the outside right too and sometimes, this is where things can go wrong.

This painting was inspired by a very lovely lady who works with children and families but who also is a seamstress. Her life is not easy but she always has time for everyone, friends and family & will do her utmost to make life easier for others, sometimes at the expense of herself! She is a proud lady, who knows all about the royal "we" and will use that if need be! Her crown of fire signifies her standing both within her life, her family and friends and in herself and the star sign of Leo, which of course as everyone knows is a fire sign. Her clock is fiery red, her dress golden with an ermine collar & dress cuffs, again underlining the royal "we". She stands in a stormy sea, which indicates that sometimes her environment is not easy, but she stands proudly & firmly because she is strong both inside and out & will not be moved by the choppy waves. It is dawn & the sun is rising over the mountains, which she has grasped firmly and pulled towards herself, this again indicates her outer & inner strength. She looks calmly at the viewer. A crescent moon in her right hand, threaded through this moon, which serves as a needle is a thread of sky with stars, these both indicate her relationship with the Universe, which, although she does not realise it, is in the palm of her hand. She is attempting to sew two of the mountains together. In real life she is always sorting everybody else out & so mountains will move for her and she does have this control.

The Universal Seamstress at the Dawn of Time.

This lady will not be moved by anything other than the beat of her heart. She will not be played with and commands respect but her heart is huge & her love endless. She is determined in her objectives, she can already envisage her goal. She is a true friend & her heart is as large and courageous as a lioness. She brings in a new dawn for many people & as we all know, it is always the darkest before the dawn & her courageous heart is with you there too, waiting in those dark periods before the light can be seen.

Thursday 11 December 2014

The Watchtowers - The Watchtower of the East.

The problems with conceptual & abstract thought.

I saw the background for The Watchtower of the East before the Watchtower herself. At times when I paint, I have more than one idea or "vision". I was contemplating different ideas for this painting but it was my daughter that triggered off which one I should use by commenting on the shape of a cloud formation.

Each morning at dawn, the Watchtower of the East lays an egg, which is in reality, the sun. It is cradled in the tail of the Eastern Watchtower but as the sun rises, she begins to vanish back into the atmosphere. Her back feet are the first to dwindle but the rest follows suit soon afterwards. The fishermen underneath this spectacular event do not see her as such, just the rising sun & the brilliant oranges & reds of the sky above, which, being busy they do not really notice. She is of the sky, the sky is she. The Watchtower, having being visible to birth the sun then vaporises into the sky, where she always is. However, each morning before dawn, the egg of the previous day, births the Watchtower of the East, who then births the new sun for the new day and the whole process starts again.

The Watchtower of the East

There is a lot of different and at times conflicting information of the Watchtowers & I am not going to go into great depth about it as then I would lose my interpretation with the amount of information there is. The Eastern Watchtower generally signifies the element of air & intellectual, conceptualising thoughts, ideas, spring, the Maiden and youth but there are also other schools of thought.

I wanted to underline the eastern connection of the Watchtower with the rising sun & the east itself. The dragon is oriental, so to me this had to be the land of the rising sun. Below this scene the fishermen in their boat carry on with their morning's work and do not notice the birthing up above. She is an air dragon, made from the sky itself, so the fishermen only see the sun and the vanishing red skies.
This represents the difficulty that we sometimes have with intellectual thought. For example; if I awake with a fantastic idea at 4:00 in the morning, I can guarantee that if I don't write it down or sketch it & go back to sleep, by the time I get up later on the idea will be gone, or at best fuzzy. Because the fishermen are busy with their own lives, they have no time for conceptualising. Any ideas that the fishermen have, they will only acknowledge as they do the skies above, but then their ideas will pass them by unless they totally focus & write them down. So often in our day-to-day lives we will have some mad idea that is actually rather clever but we leave it until it is too late to fully recall it. The blazing skies remind us that we too can be like the Eastern Watchtower, our ideas, concepts & ideals if noticed & worked upon could be trail-blazers and we should not ignore them.
The other elements of earth, water and fire bring balance to airy ideas. To have an idea & then to be able to produce something from it, one usually needs more than the idea itself and so all elements here represent balance and harmony.
There is another aspect to the fading blazing skies & the vanishing dragon, that is of youth, the time of the maiden does not last long - very much like our ideas & so needs to be lived as such NOW and NOT saved for later. All too often we let important aspects of our youth slip away because we feel it would be better if we waited. Generally, it isn't, the air dragon tell us that the time is NOW for everything we do, otherwise we might just let it all slip away.

This painting was sold this year & it went to somewhere in the East of the United Kingdom. Some artworks belong with certain people & I can safely say that this painting went to the right people and place.

My work can also be viewed at:

http://www.artfinder.com/trac-davies
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TracDaviesArtist
http://www.redbubble.com/people/tracdavies
http://tracdavies.deviantart.com/
http://www.zazzle.co.uk/tracdaviesartist
https://www.facebook.com/TracDaviesArtist
https://twitter.com/tracdavies
https://www.tsu.co/TracDaviesArtist

Trac Davies - Artist ©

Wednesday 10 December 2014

The Changing Goddess under the Wiccan Moon - Goddess Within Series, 2nd Painting.

Changes within women and how they are perceived.

How often have I heard these words? "Well she is a woman of a certain age now"; & "she is at that time of life; & "yes she is a funny age now". It always amuses me because I believe that every age in both sexes can be deemed as funny ones but there is no getting away from it, there comes a time when the body starts to go into overdrive & there is nothing that can be done about it. In particular, women's issues with the menopause have been highlighted and because we are able to bear children, maybe these changes are more evident than they are in men. After all, after a certain time, women can no longer have children whereas men do not usually have the same issues & some men can still produce sex cells in later life. Yet they too, go through changes & these are no more "funny" then they are for women.

The Changing Goddess under the Wiccan Moon is about the peri-menopausal and menopausal woman. This painting was actually inspired by a tree I saw in 2006 near a Morbihan town called Saint-jacut-les-pins. When I first saw this tree, I had no idea of what I would create and what it would be about, I just knew I had to paint it.

This tree drew me, I loved the fact that it was so hollowed out but still very much in the land of the living. In truth, I have seen more hollowed out trees that were still alive but it was so seductively alive, almost come-hither & for a tree, I thought this quite an achievement! So I took the photo and trundled off home, my baby daughter in her pram, pondering about its significance and what I would create.

Take into account that at this time we were living in a mobile home & a huge old barn that was in desperate need of renovation, there was no chance of painting. Everything was either covered in mould or dust as there was tons of ancient straw & hay in the grenier & it rained through the holey roof. Images tend to haunt me until I do something with them so I drew a version of what I wanted to do then put it to one side. We then sold the barns and moved into a house and I sketched a more detailed study & blocked some of it in. This time for me, was when the creative processes really started flowing but for this particular painting, they didn't start straight away.

For 4 years that study went untouched but one day, I awoke with the thought that it was way past time, I needed to paint that tree & this is what I produced.

The Changing Goddess under the Wiccan Moon - Trac Davies©

This one tree illustrates what takes place with a woman's body & psyche in menopause. It is autumn, a harvest moon (or Wiccan moon) hangs behind the tree but all the leaves are on the ground, they carpet the earth with gold, red and brown. Therefore depicting the autumnal years in a woman's life but these leaves also represents the eggs that have been released but not fertilised & so die over the years. The Wiccan Harvest moon hangs low and signifies three things, it underlines the connection with autumnal years, blood that encompasses the monthly cycles of birth & death and feminine knowledge coupled with instinct.

For some women, the connection is very strong with the intuitive side at this stage of life so if you wish, our natural inner witch comes out; (http://tracdaviesartist.blogspot.fr/2014/12/the-inner-wild-woman.html this also covers our intuitive side). In fact, if you look at the third branch along, you will see there is a hand pointing towards the moon, the tree itself is pointing out what is to come & every woman KNOWS that this time will come, whether it is desired or not.

At first glance, the red carpeted stairs are obvious, as is the light bulb but when viewed again you may think, why stairs & why such a brightly lit light bulb, the physiology of this is all too familiar and obvious but where do those stairs lead, & why so well lit? Each woman's journey into this stage of life is an individual one, nobody knows where it will lead but the knowledge that the change will come is clear and brightly lit. however, it is an uphill journey into a destiny that only the individual will discover.

The sleeping cat is based on my own cat Shadow & depicts feline contentment with oneself & stage of life. The wine glass, & spilled red wine portrays the blood lost and gained over the years but now the roots are prominent because it has been ripped out from its environment. It is a dying ovary, that has produced many eggs & kept the hormonal state stable in its time but now, after serving its purpose will produce no more eggs and the chemical side will diminish.

The tree itself has hidden aspects, there is an owl for hard-earned wisdom, a fairy for flight from old habits & mischievousness - because the body and mind plays a lot of tricks on the individual menopausal woman & a small set of stairs hidden within the roots & on the tree itself. These roots are very prominent & they are everywhere, such is the network of the hidden woman & her world. She goes down deep & reaches for the sky as she digs down. She has no shame of her body, with its honourable scars of life, death and rebirth as well of those that lead to a good life, whether children have been born from that body or not & nor should she.

Please also see blog:
http://tracdaviesartist.blogspot.fr/2014/12/the-inner-wild-woman.html

Tuesday 9 December 2014

What Abstract art can mean to energy & spirit.

Abstractation & Free-flowing Energy.

I think I have mentioned before just how much I love abstract art. When I paint abstracts it means that I lose myself is another art form and it tends to release any "painter's blocks" that I am suffering with at the time. I often have anything between two to four paintings on the go but sometimes, when nothing is going right & the right energy does not seem to be there for whatever I am working on at that time, I will turn to my beloved abstracts, waiting patiently on the easel and get lost in it before I throw everything else out of door and stomp on it.

I think that many people have this idea that artists can just paint anything they want onto a canvas & it will be perfect. If you are a genius like Picasso or Dali were then yes, this happens but I make mistakes, I don't always get it right first time and I get blocked in the creative processes. I envy artists that do get it right first time but then shrug my shoulders & get on with what I am painting, my creative path as well as my personal path is vastly different to theirs, I accepted that a long time ago so really it is hard to compare myself with them.

It was quite by accident that I discovered the abstract side of me, I always wondered, what would I paint? Would I be faced with a blank canvas and then not know what to do? Would I paint something and it would be a mess, a REAL mess that is. I was just fiddling around on a canvas as I couldn't progress with anything else. Nothing I painted was right, the energy wasn't there, inspiration comes and goes but you turn up to paint whether it is there or not but if the energy within isn't flowing one can get completely blocked and nothing goes right.

My first abstract has a long title, it has since birthed two other paintings. It is called The Star Goddess & Child Maintaining the Balance of the Universal Energy Flow.

I can remember at that time looking at this small canvas I had in front of me and just wondering what should I do here, part of me just wanted to go Agggghhh! & let rip but another part was thinking no. I already had a ground on it, dark blue & so I just let the energy that was so blocked in me flow and this was what I came up with.

I have wondered about the art of abstraction ever since. I feel that in many creative processes, when one becomes blocked there is a way to unlock it, for myself abstracts are the key. But what if your creativity take the form of the written word? The answer may be to write something totally different, maybe something you want to write about but haven't, maybe something inside that you feel forbidden or something you never thought about before; for example; prose or haiku.

Shamanic Waves - Joy

There is usually a way out of the traps and snares of creative blocks, & usually when I get them I know something big will come from them, something special. A lot of people have been drawn to these two paintings so my belief is that what you create to get around the blocks will be the something big that will come because it is spirit or self that is shining through you.

My work can also be viewed at:

http://www.artfinder.com/trac-davies
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TracDaviesArtist
http://www.redbubble.com/people/tracdavies
http://tracdavies.deviantart.com/
http://www.zazzle.co.uk/tracdaviesartist
https://www.facebook.com/TracDaviesArtist
https://twitter.com/tracdavies
https://www.tsu.co/TracDaviesArtist

Trac Davies - Artist ©

Monday 8 December 2014

The inner Wild Woman

Inner Wildness & Perspective.

A few of the paintings that I have completed, shows a woman with her hair flying freely. Sometimes, these paintings actually depict the essence of people that I know, such as the Guiding Light. I usually paint one or two aspects that is indicative of the inner wildness of that particular woman and also her strengths. Here you can imagine that this woman is actually very strong in the emotional sense. The moon is her shield, so therefore her emotions are too. The sword is her justice, but it also cuts away those parts of her life that no longer serve her well, her hair is her passion, her fire & the Goddess on her dress shows her inner self, accepting herself and what comes with readiness. She is alert and knows who she is, where she is going and what she wants to do. She is protector and justice all in one but she is also highly emotional but uses this to serve her purpose and not the purpose of others around her. She rises from the sea and is a Guiding Light for many other people that may be lost in their own emotional storm.

I greatly enjoy painting these pictures, I really like to "let my hair down" so to speak but sometimes I may paint a woman that has actually and inner aspect of myself, such as The Wild Woman in the Colliding Worlds - The Gift.

This woman is the crone aspect that every woman has within her psyche. We all have this inner old-lady who "keeps her eye" on our behaviour enabling us to be sharp and perspective. Yet if we ignore her voice, as sometimes we do with our inner instincts, then we can get ourselves into all sorts of trouble and end up making some terrible mistakes - & we have all done THAT in our lives! This Wild Woman is elemental and fierce, but there many sides to this inner Goddess-like aspect of a woman when she just KNOWS something!

Being able to create this inner wildness, which is elemental, free, emotionally strong and confident reminds me that this part of us is always there. She exists, just as we do but she is wiser than we. She is part of us all, but does not make up the totality of our entire being & this is where the mistakes can be made. She is the inner voice and because of this, sometimes this part of us does not get heard due to the other thoughts that are clamouring in our heads.

There are many names for this wild woman or crone-aspect of the Goddess complex, be it Cerridwen, Kali, Hectate or Baba Yaga. We all have this life-death-rebirth cycle within ourselves but what I really wanted to say is this; All is one: We can be young children but be old souls and we can be old but at times like little children all at the same time. The lines of separation are not as clear-cut as we believe but it is learning to embrace these inner aspects that leads to greater balance in our daily lives. Nobody gets it right - ever, if there is somebody out there smugly thinking that they do not seem to make the mistakes that others make or they do not suffer from the pitfalls of ego they either have not yet seen them for what they are or this time is yet to come, we cannot avoid learning these most painful lessons & it is important in helping us grow & we become better people because of them.

Sunday 7 December 2014

Colliding Worlds

Abstracts - Free the spirit & mind to explore their depths.

There are many aspects to my work & I keep extending into new & diverse territories & each time I so this, I discover a new side of myself through my art. Recently, I have started a new set of paintings that I have called the Colliding Worlds Series.

I find that abstracts release the inner tensions of the mind, leaving my creativity flowing easily. If I don't paint abstracts, I find I suffer from a form of creative block, this is really too much to bear, so I usually have three or four paintings on the go all at once. The Colliding Worlds Series are a little different to the abstracts that I have already painted, they are really absorbing and intensely personal.

Colliding Worlds, underlines the relationship between the physical, psychological and spiritual & our belief systems, how they are all interconnected & how they interact apart and together. I am fascinated about any form of symbiosis, whether it is in the physical realm or elsewhere & I regard these relationships with awe. Some are not so healthy, and can turn parasitic and this needs to be watched for.

As we grow, change and develop, our inner worlds make connections, these need to be healthy but there are times in our development and growth that a traumatic experience or experiences from the outer world can cause connections to develop that are not healthy. These can cause problems later on in life. I have covered this subject more in depth in the following blog regarding the wounded ego. http://tracdaviesartist.blogspot.fr/2015/02/emotions-accepting-rough-with-smooth.html

Colliding Worlds - The Gift.

There will be five of these paintings, the mind relates well to myths & the fairy stories that we were told as children. These stories are more than just tales, they warn of real dangers that we will have to face in life, not just from a physical sense but in a emotional & psychological sense as well. This painting depicts both light and dark within ourselves, the myths, beliefs & stories that influence our choices and each person that looks upon the Colliding Worlds Paintings will see something different.

Colliding Worlds - The Silent Scream.

I have also added the second of the Colliding Worlds paintings that I have completed, I have two others on the easels at present and there is one in utero in my mind but that one is not ready to be painted just yet.

Last year I finished the third of the Colliding Worlds Series. A journey through life is the best way I can explain what these paintings depict.

Colliding Worlds - The Death & Rebirth of Little Red Riding Hood.

This painting concerns growth as we leave child-hood & enter adult-hood & how this changes the psyche. There is always a part of us that will hang on to childhood themes in young adulthood. For example, from 1996 - 1999 I read biology at Southampton University. In the first year, as part of our course-work we had to partake in a field-trip in Southern Spain. It was great fun, we went for 2 weeks and divided our time with exploring flora and fauna and the local bars. We took a bus to get to the airport and then again in Spain to get to the hostels in Zahara de los Atunes. On the way to the airport, I was most amused at the younger students, all aged 19 or 20, chatting on the bus about what happened with the teletubbies that morning. In our group, there were 4 mature students, me being one of them & as we listened to their conversations about the kids programs of that day, I added that my 5 year old son watched most of them too. This to me underlines that although the younger students were adults, they had still retained that zest for life and youthful exuberance that we seem to lose as we grow older. There is a little bit of the child that hangs on & this seems to stay until we are loaded down with responsibilities, working-life, family, money issues & the worries that most of the youth do not have to face. This painting is about the conflict between childhood and adulthood as well as the search for finding oneself, which at first is a major stage in our lives but we do throughout our life. Each stage of our life we have to rediscover who we are, but here the vestiges of childhood cling on and can have a major impact on who we are & are going to be.

I will be updating this blog as The Colliding Worlds Series develops.

http://tracdaviesartist.blogspot.fr/2015/02/emotions-accepting-rough-with-smooth.html

My work can also be viewed at:

Saturday 6 December 2014

Drawing Down the Moon - The problems with creative blocks.

Problems with Energy flow and why.

Sometimes, I can get totally blocked with a painting, the energy does not flow or move in the right manner, so I have to put this to one side. There are a few of these paintings, some have been waiting for years but I find that however hard I try, I just can't progress with them.

Because I tend to paint people from the inside out, rather than the other way around, if the subject is a person, I find that is usually due to some huge inner changes that are occurring at that time and I can't paint because there is more than one face to that person. It would be unjust to keep painting that person, they are evolving another side to themselves and this needs to be accounted for before the painting can be completed.

Many of you may say, & I would agree, that a person is in constant change and flux anyway so what is the problem? The issue usually stems from inner tensions and stress that occurs with change, the inner self does not shine through as clearly as it should & as a mirror of sorts, I do not wish to reflect that side back for it is just a situation that a person is coping with, whether positive or negative that can change a person from the inside, once this stress is clear, then a painting can be continued.

I am getting close to being able to start thinking of completing this painting, which I have put to one side for now, it will need changing again because the old facet has been put away whilst the new one has been born, created and is now shining through for all to see.

Friday 5 December 2014

Rhiannon - Early development of the Horse's tale

Rhiannon

An artist needs to show their work around, sometimes in various stages, sometimes not. All too often, we create our art as if we are brewing magic in a cave, away from curious onlookers, secret, hidden, safe.

Yet an artist's creations need to be seen, often from a bystanders viewpoint what I have created will have a very different emotional context that what I might be feeling at the time. I have often pondered on how I will create something that to me is special. I have laboured long and hard over a certain painting with my magical blood, sweat and tears yet nobody comments or mentions anything. Then I may have thrown up something onto the canvas in a couple of days, a piece of work that I may not feel so attached to, those same people may love and comment all around.

This painting is called Rhiannon, after the Celtic Horse Goddess. has had various stages & this is one of them. It is nowhere near finished but I wanted to share with you the Horse's tale, my tale in many ways, I am the horse that has to find her way to water all by herself and I make no bones about being as stubborn as one & all too often, we can cut our noses off to spite our face with this mindset!

My work can also be viewed at:

http://tracdavies.deviantart.com/
https://www.tsu.co/TracDaviesArtist

https://www.facebook.com/TracDaviesArtist
https://twitter.com/tracdavies

Trac Davies - Artist