Trac Davies Artist - Musing's from the Depths.

Thursday, 30 April 2015

Enough! Seeing Things from the Other Side.

Enough! Seeing things from the other person's point of view and realising that they are also human & are just trying to do the best they can with what they have been given.

This painting is another one that goes off the beaten track as it is my first truly surrealistic piece. I have always had a real fascination for surrealistic art, Dali has always been a firm favourite of mine, I love the symbolism & hidden messages that I see and I have always wanted to paint surrealistic art myself. I have had a few ideas, which have been shelved for the time being but something significant happened to a friend of mine that finally got me truly inspired and I want to relate her story & explain the painting.

Many years ago, before I moved to France I worked in Social Services as a PA for the Children and Families Division. I worked through an Agency & had six different part-time jobs in various departments, so I saw life & the work that was being undertaken from the bottom-up & top-down.

It was here I met a good friend. She is kind, practical, with a huge heart and very loyal, a little bossy at times but very gifted at many things. At that time, she was a Family Worker & had been working in this area of work for over 20 years. A Family Worker tends to work with the families that need help or assistance in some way. She assesses parenting capacity and uses family therapy skills to discover what is needed & what she can do to help each individual family. She liaises with social workers and other members of the social team or other departments in Social Services and provides assistance for both parents and children. She also helps assess the situation in the home & although her work is preventative, she sometimes has to assess whether the child is at risk and whether the family needs to be referred to the Child Protection team or if the child needs to go into emergency foster care whilst the situation is being resolved. I worked with her over 12 years ago & in the intervening years, many things have changed in social work but what I will say is this lady was the right person for this line of work, she was empathetic and genuinely cared about the people she worked with, her work was intuitive & people-based, rather than paper-work or financially based.

As a child in the 1970's I remember the fear of the social worker visiting your house and "taking you away". My parents never spoke of Social Services, but I can recall that this was one of the horror stories that we were told at school by our teachers, which frightened us all witless & ensured we all behaved ourselves. Nobody ever really explained that in general you wouldn't get a social worker banging on your door anyway, so this fear stayed in the background of my mind until I worked in Social Services myself and saw things for myself.

What I saw changed my views considerably. I came across a team that worked well together across the area - despite any differences they might have. I met people who genuinely cared and would get really very stressed if things were not going in the right direction for the families involved, especially the children. In some teams, they dealt with the assessments & some of the reports on individuals that I typed up were utterly heart-rending & were worse once the Child Protection Team were involved. I cannot repeat details and would not but some of the cases still haunt me all these years on. I also saw the conditions that the staff had to work under, the risks that were posed to themselves, from nits to scabies, from a room full of smoke from cannabis such as skunk to hypodermic needles lying on the floor where a baby crawled, from clutter & dirt to absolute filth and rats & from threats to actual physical violence, the social work team saw it all and were accustomed to more things than their education prepared them for.

My friend had not trained as a social worker, although many referred to her because of her vast knowledge. She has dyslexia & Social Services were not prepared to pay for assistance for her. The test alone went from £250 & so she found my services very handy because I am rather good at deciphering what she was saying. She was happy in her job as a family worker although sometimes the stresses of the work got to her, she managed to cope better than most.

However, there came a day a few years back that Social services in that area was totally restructured. At the time, my friend was in hospital for a minor operation & had other other things going on in her personal life. She received the forms, but groggy due to the medication and her ongoing personal circumstances meant that when she read the forms, they were not self-explanatory. She put down her choices for what she would like to do and for some very obscure reason ended up with her third choice, which was something she had not done before and was front line work, the job description is as follows:

Family Engagement Worker.

Staff to work on the front line of Social Services gathering background information from parents, school, doctor or hospital, nursery, housing & CAMHS (Children & Adolescent Mental Health Services). All information put onto a assessment form. Once assessment form completed, worker to arrange family meetings at 6-weekly intervals and record all this on the computer system. Staff to fill other additional forms regarding each case. Once forms completed, processed & recorded onto the computer system, staff to create a weekly summary of work progress and visit. This does not have to be done every week, but the primary visit has to take place within 24 hours of the original incident. In addition, staff to cover duty reception once a week for the duration of the day. Any calls that come in regarding the families already known or any new family which require attention to be dealt with, up to and including the removal of children, all of which would require recording on that day on paper, this would then have to be recorded onto the computer system. It is obligatory for all staff to be involved in and attend training & staff meetings, this includes staff systemic discussion & personal supervision.

This summary was written by my friend, as you can see it is nothing like what she had just spent the last 30 odd years doing so it was a shock to her to be given her third choice but this wasn't the best bit. The structure re-haul meant that nobody under management had admin staff, so all paperwork, reports, reception duties, etc were to be undertaken by the staff. Therefore, my friend who worked part-time at 24 hours a week, & who had 19 - 25 children on her books to work with, had to do all of the admin work and as there are only so many hours in the day it was not all getting done. Now onto the painting.

Enough! - Trac Davies©

Some people that have seen this have said that on some level they can relate to this painting. It is about the stresses and strains that pull us apart & we all have to endure in our daily lives; but I shall explain it from my friend's point of view because many people do not really know what the social work team have to do and what they put up with.

Although this painting is not of my friend it is indicative of someone who works in the field of social work. The neck is strained because of the amount of contorting a person has to do to see, hear & understand all. In addition, sometimes staff do have to put their necks on the line & the pressure this puts on a person is enormous & deeply affects the health of any one individual. The head is bald indicative that the person has torn his or her hair out in sheer frustration, not only to do with any one case but the processes that go on and also the politics. Office politics in social services are rife, there are many decent people there that want to do much for others but there is always at least one person in any office who are in the job for their own ends & these people do not care who they trample on their way up the "corporate ladder", client or colleague. These are the people that do social services no favours thus adding extra strain onto the already over-pressured staff.

The hands that pull on the mouth of this person distort the lips into a sharp downward curve, this depicts the unhappiness that is felt because of the stresses of the job. The feminine hand was my friend's manager, who micro-managed her whole team beyond endurance. Many people left this team because of this behaviour & because they could no longer bear the stress of being deskilled and diminished in the workplace. The other hand is that of both other professional or of adult clients, who demanded her attention. The child's hand also pulls and pulls most fiercely because it is the children that are felt the most. The christening bracelet had dropped and stretched the arm into a cage, where the parents are trapped. having children is a wonderful joyous event but when circumstance go against you, this event can become joyless and you can feel trapped in parenthood. So here, these parents for whatever reasons have felt trapped by their baby or child, they look longingly out of the "cage" but they do not stand together and are facing opposite directions either trying to find a way out or a solution.

Both ears are long from the effort of having to listen to everyone and have been pinned back with a tack and there is a old fashioned telephone and a smart phone earring with a mouth situated on the lobes. You have to have your ears pinned back for ALL information at all times & so this part of the painting has been depicted as thus. The mouths are all female because they are the ones that tend to do most of the talking & have more trust in the process. The chin has been pulled down by telephonic cable attached to a red phone with an egg and talking sperm at the bottom of the painting. There is a red fingerprint on the egg and a mouth on the sperm talking into a red telephone - red because of the urgency and danger that goes with these conversations. Also, a lot of cases that are dealt with are historical, events repeat time and time again so before a child is born, they may well take the same steps as their parents and grandparents and indeed a manager once told me that she was now working with 3 & 4th generation families and the mistakes just kept getting repeated with each generation. This is what is so disheartening to people working in social services thus pulling the chin down, that whatever preventative steps they take to help the children and families in need, many families never leave the abuse cycles that they live in & have been born into.

The nose has also been distorted, one nostril by a tightrope, my friend felt she was walking tightrope everyday with her manager and some of the cases she was involved in as well. The other nostril has been pulled by money, not only the need to earn but also by budget-cuts. There is no money in this service now, hence why most admin staff have been cut. There are teams that do not have a permanent office, they hot desk in whatever office they can find, there has been no permanence and so money has been a huge overwhelming factor in whatever has been dictated in so many people's lives, not only on the social team but also the resources available for the families they work with.

The hook that pulls at tears at the skin, thus making it bleed on the other side to that of the baby's hand is that of the pain that is left with dealing in cases that involve severe abuse. Dealing with these cases can tear into you and many empathise to the point where the pain of the situation is felt. I have portrayed this as a hook because it often comes from the most surprising of places & catches you out. It comes out of nowhere but once it is known about, it pulls and tears at your heartstrings & the stress & pain of this shown on your face.

the vision of this person has been distorted because on one eye a family in need pull at the vision as if in a tug-of-war and on the other eye you have a social worker, a manager, a policeman & a judge. The vision can be distorted with so many people pulling at what you have observed & it is necessary to have a clear-sighted head at all times. The policeman and judge are at the back of this tug-of-war because they are not always involved in every case & so join the team as and when they are needed, of course these people could be just as well a doctor or teacher or another professional that is involved with any particular case.

At the top of the painting, the sky is orange to depict the rising sun, The dawning of a situation whether for good or bad always occurs. The head retains all conversations as the mouth depicts on the top & there is also a tack here, pinning the top of the head up, stretching the brain to accommodate all that has & is been said and what is discovered and already known about. As the forehead is always related to the brain, it was what had to be kept in mind with each individual case & all of these things pull at both brain & attention.

There is the amount of paperwork produced, some which was unnecessary. A book that was a lifetime's worth of knowledge also has to be kept in mind but it is pinned shut until it is needed. The scales relates to the justice system. They are on fire because sometimes, despite all efforts and best intentions mistakes are made and justice is not done & sometimes tragedies occur because there are always those that somehow slip through the net.
The figure on the swing with long white hair depicts the freedom of childhood & their pure energy. It also depicts what had to be observed and KNOWN so that a child's freedom is right and just and not in any way abused. The woman with the fiery hair is a woman that has undergone abuse, she sits perched right on the edge because often in this line of work adults come along that sometimes need to be talked away from the edge and helped down into the better reality because the pain of abuse burns very brightly and can take over a person's life.

A door appears black and white, as many things do but is actually in shades of grey. This head had to open these doors of knowledge to enter the real ones, nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors, not even people that work closely with a family can know everything.   However, what has to be taken into account as this door opens, is that there are children behind it, painting their world into existence with sticky finger-prints on the walls & by their presence alone and they are the most important people to help of all.

Finally there are the tears, these I have left last because it needs to be said that many people that work within Social Services are feeling this way and the tears are pain, frustration, stress and hurt as each and every person that cares feels pulls apart & betrayed by the system they work in & that means the whole system is actually close to collapse.

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

Stages of a Changing Woman-Hood.

The Star Goddess and Child. The Birth of the 4th Soul-Generation, The Celebration of the Crone as She Enters a New Dimension.

For some time I have wanted to write a blog about the Star Goddess series that I have so-far painted. I am going to cover the aspects of the second painting, which goes by the title The Star Goddess and Child. The Birth of the 4th Soul-Generation, The Celebration of the Crone as She Enters a New Dimension, but I first have to discuss a little about the first & third paintings. The problem I face with this is that 2 out of three of the paintings are more abstract but the second is not. The first of the paintings flowed from my paintbrush & was created without me really thinking about it. I love it when paintings are created like that & often the message that I want to get across seems to be understood that much easier.

Star Goddess & Child Maintaining the Balance of the Universal Energy Flow Trac Davies© .

A lot of my abstract work flows like this and I end up with shapes and faces that I didn't plan but were painted there anyway. The third of the paintings was actually finished before the second. It was another one that flowed through me and was completed fairly quickly.

Star Goddess & Child Contemplating the Universal Tides of Passion Trac Davies© .

But the second of these paintings deserve a little more explanation rather than as a representation of the weft and weave of time, energy and inner and outer states as the first and third paintings depict.

The second Star Goddess painting was one I have had to think about, even after I painted it, after a conversation I had with a French friend. She liked the second Star Goddess painting & I was trying to explain to her that they were the four stages of a woman's life, she asked me if I meant generations of women in the same family but I didn't and at that time I didn't quite know how to put it across.

Star Goddess and Child. The Birth of the 4th Soul-Generation, The Celebration of the Crone as She Enters a New Dimension

At first glance this does appear to be generational, the archetype of mother, maiden & crone except there is the baby, the newborn Star Goddess in her purest state. To me, each of these women are the same one, just at a different stage of life and each stage is transformational in its own right. They are not related, but they are all She, the Goddess that strives to be heard in every woman at each transformative stage in her life.

I will start with the Star Maiden, the link here between fire, spring and the Goddess Brigid has been underlined with fire & dance. I tend to paint wild hair to depict the divine but somewhat primal energy and the hair on the Star Maiden's head burns fiercely and almost appears that of an explosion. Her hair burns with such intensity because it is indicative of the rising sap of the springtime plants and that of passion & natural forces that drive such desires. These elements of spring and youth resonate most strongly with this woman. I have also painted her pubic hair as fire because this stage of life is usually the most passionate for a woman. Many women have mentioned to me that sexual intensity burns the brightest and fiercest in this era, for the maiden just really meant that of an unmarried woman who had not had children. This is true in the sense that once children come along, a woman finds it hard to divide her energy between that of her child's needs & of her own. Her child always comes first and a woman usually accepts her lot with resignation but with new purpose and contentment, although it is often hard for her partner if she has one, to understand why. So for this moment, the maiden dances with joy, feeling no shame in her nudity, her passion & desire burning brightly and her energy appearing to be never-ending. There is a look of ecstasy on her face but also one of joyful amazement as this stage of life is full of intense and wonderful surprises! Her message is to enjoy every experience, whilst youthful energy & passion last.

The Star Mother comes next, often many artists will paint a pregnant woman but I have painted one with a newborn child and there are many profound reasons for this. We all know that pregnancy changes us in many ways, our body changes, our emotions are usually all over the place. I found my brain was not in the right place at all, this is also linked with hormonal changes and I found myself drifting off a lot of the time. However, this tenancy to reside in Lala land was truly underlined when I was pregnant with my daughter. I now live in France but at that time, we had only been here for three months & I didn't speak French. So, living in another country, speaking no French and learning a very different culture to that of my own was really hard but being pregnant it was almost impossible because I was 39, pregnant and I found I could not concentrate to learn the things I needed to survive in another country. Pregnancy does change us but the birth of a child changes a woman in deeper and profound ways that can be overlooked at the time. 21 years ago I gave birth to my son, 5 months after the birth I started re-educating, which led to me taking a degree in biology. This was a huge change for me and it has changed my life and ways of thinking enormously. At 40 years old I had my daughter, not long after she was born I found myself going back towards creative pursuits. Again, I was changed in a deep and profound manner. Summing this up, when a woman has a child, new aspects of herself are also born. At first, these aspects show themselves tentatively, a small pebble in the pool of subconscious reasoning, but once that pebble is dropped the ripples go on forever. So, we don't just have to consider the birth of the child, a new being but the birth of a new woman and this happens each time she has a child. Childbirth changes a woman more-so than the pregnancy. Here the Star Mother has no face, because she is now a mystery to herself & to others, no-one, including herself will know how the birth of her child will change her. She also has a halo for hair because at this stage of childbirth and delivery, the woman is a true Goddess in every sense of the word but her energies are more focused on the child rather than her own personal development. Every child born is a star child, a divine creature but so is the mother. She has carried this morsel of life for 9 long months, she has made life with her partner, she has felt and watched it grow from within and birthed it. There are some aspects of childbirth here that I do not feel qualified to comment on because I have had 2 Cesarean sections for my children as I can reach the third stage of labour but I can't progress beyond that point. I do know that it must be like squeezing a watermelon out of a keyhole & I also know that when women birth their children naturally, they tend to recover from the birthing process much faster. It takes longer after surgery and stomach muscles are never the same again afterwards. But the sense of overwhelming love and fierce pride that overtakes a woman's senses once she first sees her child is totally overwhelming and even though you are tired and sore, you feel part of the divine when you look upon your child & this feeling is the same whether you have naturally birthed it or had surgery. The message from the Star Mother is to adapt, to nurture & to accept the new self as well as that of your new child.

Touching on the subject of the new Star Goddess, she is in her purest state, full of the potential of life & so shining at her brightest. Her radiant energy reaches outwards as she connects with the living world but this state is one of total innocence and trust. She has no preconceived ideas about what life is and her place within it, She just is. This state of being, as many Gurus will tell you is the most difficult in life to reach but they reason that as we have already attained this state of mind, albeit in a newborn sense, we could, with practise attain it again. Therefore, the message of this phase of life is just to be, have no preconceptions & expect nothing. However, as any mother knows children constantly need love and attention as well as feeding, changing, bathing and burping! We all know that babies expect this but as a newborn, whilst they are focusing on the new world around them there are none of these expectations so the message of the newly born Star Goddess can only be viewed from that point.

The Crone

At last we reach the Star Crone, As the title suggests we are celebrating the Star Crone entering a new dimension. She is enclosed in the oval of the piscis vesica which is part of another time & place, but as yet she has not entered the next dimension. Her stare is almost defiant as she looks at the viewer but her head is angled slightly downwards as she prepares to leap into the cauldron of death and rebirth. Her white hair flies freely, depicting her divine energy gained by hard work & many years of learning. Her body and face are aged and she bears honourable scars of her life. The cauldron in paganism always has been indicative of death and rebirth, Cerridwen is a Celtic crone Goddess that owns a sacred cauldron. The difference between ourselves and the crone Goddess is we do not own death or birth, we are just part of the process, we do not guard it & it is not ours, only in the sense that we are all born and we all must die. Rebirth can happen in many ways, the phases of a woman's life that I have discussed in this blog are all transformative & reincarnation has always been a deep part of pagan belief. Not everyone believes in reincarnation, we could all be right or wrong and this is what scares people, this is why Crone Goddesses are looked upon with awe and terror, because death is a reality, we all have to face it & we do not know what lies on the other side of the cauldron's depths. Crone Goddesses always have a sharp side but a kind hand, death is a harsh reality but for those who are suffering, it is a kindness too. The Crone knows she does not have as much time as she used to, so there is a sharpness about her as she faces the depths of the cauldron but there is always a side to the Crone that is softer. She has no fear, she has come this far, leaping into the void that is death is just another new adventure for her and because she can remember the spiral dance of her Maiden days, she will undertake it joyfully.

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Trac Davies - Artist ©

Monday, 16 February 2015

Emotions - Accepting the rough with the smooth, facing ourselves from the depths of darkness and light.

Emotions - Painting for Inner Peace.

The problem with being creative is that you hold within you the dual blessing and curse of seeing the world from a perspective that many other people just can't see or understand. If allowed, any form of artistic endeavour can be a mine-field & can often blow up in your face, leaving the ego and heart, tattered & sore. Art is so subjective, not everyone admires the same creations, or the thought-processes behind them, which is just as well because then there is enough room for us all to create and show our work, content in the knowledge that someone out there will have an opinion over it, whether positive or negative.

There is a school of thought that believe that any negative emotion is downright bad for people. They believe we as humans should float around in clouds of good feelings & be immersed permanently in light and love. This is actually fine, as long as one faces the darkness within, feelings that are dredged up and shaped by our own egos. The danger is that if someone does not face their fears, anger, rejections, disappointments, failures and so on, they do not face the inner child who is having a real temper-tantrum or bawling their eyes out because they have in some way been hurt. The damage that arises from these terrible feelings can actually turn really toxic if not addressed & cause huge problems.


Shamanic Waves - Rage. -Trac Davies©

We all do this to a certain degree so it is a process that must be dealt with daily, bottled hurts do no good and can get blown out of proportion if allowed to. For example, there are the disappointments we deal with at some stage in our life regarding work, promotion or a pay rise. When it occurs, it comes as a blow but we may think to ourselves; I will deal with these feelings later but I don't have time right now. However, for some reason this task may be pushed aside, predominately because that person does not want to examine the situation and the pain that it caused. If these negative feelings that arise from rejection are not dealt with right away, there will be growing resentment and anger regarding certain individuals from the situation, e.g. the person who DID get the promotion and the boss. Eventually this resentment may lead to a huge argument or something worse, something sly and evil that slithers from the wounded ego. The results just may lead to the downfall of everyone, including & especially the person that felt injured in the first place and all because they didn't deal with how they felt in the first place.

As an artist, many aspects of our psyche really interest me, I love the sides of a person that holds goodness and beauty but I have healthy respect for our darker side. When the dark side of people is discussed, a lot of people don't always believe that they have one. All of us do but it isn't in a evil villain sense, it does not always mean that someone wants to become a criminal mastermind or a mass-murderer. What this means is that for a person to be balanced and whole, they cannot be a total saint, there has to be equilibrium and denying to yourself that you feel baser feelings and instincts actually can make a person really ill.

Sometimes, when I have been hurt or upset, when those deep feelings threaten to overwhelm me so that I feel that may be just a little too much to handle, I paint them. Yet I don't only paint my own feelings, I sometimes I paint the intensity of emotion of someone that is close to me, I paint their pain as it overwhelms them and sometimes overpowers me. It is easy to be subjective of a person's anguish unless you have a connection or are close to them. When pain hits and hits hard, it can threaten everyone in its path, rather than react to something that is really not my issue, I will paint it instead, this helps me keep my own equilibrium & stops me from being absorbed in their pain and the circumstances surrounding it.

Shamanic Waves - Betrayal. - Trac Davies©

I usually paint these emotions in an abstract form, intense feelings are easier to get onto the canvas in that way. I let it all out, good & bad, sunshine and rain, the whole lot, however dark & deep. This is a process that is actually rather therapeutic but when it comes to my own emotions, sometimes painting what I have felt at the time is really hard and I struggle to convey those feelings, I hesitate about how I want to paint everything that I have felt. When this happens, I have to walk away, think about it from both my and an abstract point of view. it usually means there is something that I have not as yet looked at in the right way, so recreating those emotions as a painting it helps me see it all the more clearly and then once it is painted I can move on in all ways.

Colliding Worlds - The Silent Scream. - Trac Davies©

Painting the negative, yet very powerful emotions helps me put everything into perspective, which is required for inner peace. You cannot be at one with yourself or the peace within until you have dredged the deepest and darkest depths of your own psyche. This takes courage but facing the negative aspects of yourself is absolutely imperative for personal growth.

Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Masculine & Feminine Energy - Balancing things up!

Equal rights and balance between the sexes.

A lot of people have commented on how my work seems to focus on the more feminine aspects of life. I will admit that I do paint a lot that is connected with both the female and the Goddess but this does not mean that I believe that the corresponding male energy is of any less interest of importance. Often, many people believe that male and female energies are separate issues, that female energy is different to male. In some cases this is right but it is not the entirety of the story. Men and women are wired differently & do have different hormone levels, so because of this there are differences. Yet if the sexes both got off their soap-boxes & listened, really listened to each other, they would find that there are many similarities.

Lightbringer - Elemental Fire. Trac Davies©

I have met men and women from very many different walks of life, I have met highly creative women, women that prefer to be housewives, women that are as strong, if not stronger than the stereotypical male, women in academia with PhD's that are at the top of their chosen field, women that are blatantly anti-male and are aggressive when stating their opinions, women that do not want children & women that do and women that work in highly powered careers in a typically masculine world, that have been ostracised by their own sex because of it.

I have also met men that prefer to work in hairdressers rather than on a building site, men that prefer the building site, men that teach, men that are top of their chosen field but also feel the pressure of their elevated status along with other men and women that relish in it, men that are househusbands, men that are so chauvinistic they take women's breath away with their audacious machismo, men that like to wear more feminine things, men that are in academia, creative men & men that feel that they have as much right to access to their children as women have once a partnership goes wrong.

There is a lot of stereotyping of what people feel a man or a woman should be and what they are entitled to. I feel that nobody has a right to pigeon-hole what a person is or wants to be or to base individual rights on sex. When I think about what a man or a woman is, I know that there are certain biological differences that leads to a divergences in how we present ourselves, how we see things, how we deal with things & sometimes our natural drives. Yet, much of how we present as our sex can be linked not just to our biological differences but how we have been parented, what propaganda assaulted our earlobes in childhood and what conditioning we each received from our parents, other family members, teachers & other adults, what culture we are living in, what religion our family observes and how strictly it is adhered to and most importantly, how this all affected us on an individual level. Nurture and nature is very important to what a person will be, this has never been dismissed in biology itself but so many people ignore the fact that our environment is just as important as our genetics and biological differences & contrariwise other people ignore the genetic and biological components. Sometimes, some people will even ignore that each person is also very different & have a tendency to generalise & will do this with individuals to populations, which is where the stereotypes come from.

The Centurion - Trac Davies© .

However, even in this more enlightened age, there is still this pressure for men and women to display certain tendencies that may not actually to be natural to who they really are, for example, the expectation in some places of men to join the forces. Thankfully, in some countries these days there is no longer the need for every man to conscript in the forces. In the United Kingdom from 1939 to 1960, conscription was called National Service and unless a man had a legitimate reason that exempted him from enlisting, it was a law that had to be adhered to.

Now only those that wish to become part of the forces join and I personally believe that there is a good reason for that. Not every man has the right nature to be in the forces so why should every man be viewed as a natural soldier when they are not? In addition, there always have been many women that desire to be in the forces, I am not one of these women but I respect the right of other women to have this need fulfilled & now they can if they so wish.

Yet there is still a core of people that believe that women joining the forces and fighting on the front line is wrong but why should this need be viewed as an entirely masculine one? There are good examples of women that were warriors from history, e.g. Boudicca, one only has to look back to realise that the need to protect others is not just a male trait & never was just that. There are also good examples from nature itself - would you go into the lionesses den, especially one with cubs?

There is also the belief that one sex should earn more than the other. This to me beggars belief, if men and women are doing the same job and doing it well they should be paid the same. I might hear some male grumbles here that I am going from an entirely female perspective, untrue. The Catwalk for example, is a place where women can earn much more than their male colleagues but on the other side it is well know that in the world of finance, men can earn much more than women.

Then there is childcare, why should this be a predominately female occupation & why should many women be penalised in the job-market because they have had or are going to have a child. On the other hand, why should men not have their share of paternity leave and not be financially penalised by their employer either?

The list could go on & so many of these stereotypes are not only dangerous to progress and to our relationships with each other, they are grossly outdated in a modern world. However, different cultures and places in our world have very different viewpoints from my own. There is such a huge imbalance in the treatment of men and women in certain countries that this cannot be ignored. Even in the UK certain cultures prefer to keep to their own laws and ways of life. At times, this underlines the fact that to many types of culture, women are viewed as property and not people in their own right. This, I will add is not adhered to by every person from that culture, only some but if things like enforced marriage occur in one family from a different culture, people that generalise will tar all of that culture with the same brush. This is unfair, individual behaviour should not account for everybody else from a certain culture but this should go for all cultures, even my own.

Sometimes personal need drive us to where we do not want to be in this world & with each other, this can only be countered if we are all given the same rights and respect, not only from the laws and authorities, but to each other because we are all, at the end of the day, just human.

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

Also further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_Kingdom
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/10/women-british-army-fighting-front-line-hammond-combat-sexist
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11276724/Army-front-line-Women-are-to-fight-on-the-front-line.-Now-the-battle-really-begins.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/boudicca.shtml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/10360181/Is-equal-pay-between-the-sexes-the-new-barometer-of-a-good-place-to-work.html
http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/2013/11/equal-pay/
http://ifsw.org/publications/human-rights/different-cultural-perspectives-and-human-rights/

Trac Davies - Artist ©

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

Art and science, are they as separate as we all believe?

Many people think of science that is something that cannot be easily reached or understood. As some of you may know I actually do have a science degree, a BSc. in Biology but I am not the most natural scientist. I have a great love of science but I do not have the mathematical acumen that is so needed these days and sometimes my logic is very flawed or non-existent.

The love I have of both science and art stems back to childhood. I fell in love with the two subjects at the same time thus to me they are inextricably linked. I remember the old documentaries from Magnus Pyke, he was my first scientific hero of the day. I would sit on the floor, enthralled, watching the great man, his arms flying in all directions and love his evident enthusiasm for his subject but as I was about 5 years old, I did not understand a single word he was saying. There was a part of the programme that showed the atomic structure in movement, this also fascinated me and made sense to my 5 year old brain but for the life of me I would not have been able to explain why & to this day, still can't.

At the same time, I was also beginning to really love art, Tony Hart was my first hero with his wonderful programme Vision On, followed later on in the 1970's by Take Hart. They were both wonderfully compelling programmes to watch, my younger self was always inspired by all of the arts but there was also room for science. To me, these subjects were interchangeable but at that time and sometimes even now, to many people they are not.

Looking back, I now realise how ground-breaking these programmes were, Magnus Pyke was one of the first, enthusiastic scientists I ever watched on the television & as I grew older, sometimes even understood. Not for him the po-faced, white coated, very serious man, mumbling into his test-tubes, his enthusiastic explanations gave me a love of science that I still have. Since then there have been other heroes, David Attenborough, Edward Wilson, Rachel Carson, Matt Ridley & Steve Jones to name a few of many.

Art started with Tony Hart, but I was born in the 1960's. Art and music went together in the 1960's and 1970's and these subjects were rammed home together, album covers giving me the first inclination of different types of art. In the late 1970's, I came across art books, such as fantasy but them I was introduced to surrealism, this form of art was delightful, I have a great love of surrealism and have ideas brewing here, which will be painted in the future. The list of heroes I have now for art are so long I would never be able to finish it but Dali deserves mention as does Boleslaw Biegas but there are so many others, they all fight for attention.

However, what does art have to do with science and what does science have to do with art? This question is actually quite complicated & the answer not just one seamless & easy explanation. Here I will only briefly cover how I feel about this subject, I may come back to write another blog later as the explanations are never-ending & they only lead to more questions.

Beauty is one of the answers. Any cellular structure, whether it is a plant cell, a blood cell or a sex cell has great beauty and complexity that both fascinates and thrills the viewer. It is a beautiful sight looking down a microscope at a cell that has been stained. When I stared re-educating, I started with a Biology GCSE. I was 28 years old at the time so this was 20 years ago, we had to look at cells from various parts of both plant and animal and my response? WOW! Aren't these all beautiful! The rest of the students there, most that probably went onto become really successful scientists thought I was barking mad and really didn't understand what I was saying. The structure, delicacy & complexity of all these stained cells were wonderful to behold and deserved respect. All organisms right from the molecular up to the individual, their inner and outer interactions, are not only beautiful but awe-inspiring and complicated.

The Flight of the Hamsters - Escape from Planet Earth. An alternative theory of why hamsters always run around in hamster wheels and in plastic balls; they are practising to go back to their own planet by using any means possible.

Then there is energy. Energy is always thought of in the same genre as physics and it is, but EVERYTHING has energy. Organisms such as people, butterflies, dolphins, brainwaves, trees, nervous systems & grass, I could go on. Some artists can feel energy, I am one of those artists. I cannot explain it, there is very little I can say except that when I visit a place I can feel the waves of energy that come from it. This is also related to both art and science because energy is life, from the smallest bacteria to elephants and huge redwood trees, to the land itself.

This painting is an Energy painting. It is my interpretation of how Glastonbury Tor in Somerset feels & is called The Healing. I will not add much more to this because different individuals see different things and also feel differently about they see.

Most of my work do have energy forms within them, I leave that to the viewer to find what they are but I shall be marrying life, art, science again in the future because we do not always appreciate the beauty that is right in front of us. Many of us do not see the beauty within an organism, how they interact together and their inner reactions. And because there is not the appreciation or understanding of how beautiful we all are and of the world around us, people take everything for granted and some go further by destroying what is not only our heritage but that of all of our futures.

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.