No.38 My Ancestor
I had a dream of an artwork about a year ago and have been sketching it, doodling it, and wanted to create it ever since. The image shown is one of those sketches. I knew I had written about it in my journal at the time, describing the dream and the artwork I would make, so went back looking for that particular entry. I found it no problem but was surprised to find out that it hadn’t been a dream at all. It was in fact a vision that just came to me as I wrote in my journal. I can still see the image so clearly in my minds eye but had somehow convinced myself that I had been asleep when it came to me. It just goes to show how our minds can distort memories. I was so sure it had been a dream!
To share my train of thought and the inspiration for the artwork, here is the extract from my journal.
“I want my art to connect people to nature and our ancestors. They (my ancestors) can not speak their names, but they give me the feeling that they can provide energy, life force, creative life force, that reaches out of the artwork.
A female figure walking with purpose towards the front of the painting (so it’s a painting?!). With long dark hair, her face in shade, shaddow, surrounded by brown smoke, swirling. A very dark shaddow to the right. A tree to the left of her in the midground in a damp, dusk landscape. Drizzle, moss, a rainforest feel to the ground. Grey sky, not dusk, just flat failing light.
She looks like she will walk out of the painting. The tree has only a few leaves. The ground is light green, the colour when the light is about to go, light filtered by the clouds. It is a crooked tree but it it a survivor and growing regardless. What type of tree? A symbolic, meaningful tree. (Hawthorn?)
She is my ancestor. She is walking out of the past and into the present to bring us knowledge. There is much wisdom she can share. So much wisdom has been lost. Lost because of fear, the need to control, the need to dominate. She is my ancestor. She is connected to nature, to the life force. She is grounded and wise and wants to meet me, meet us all, everyone in the present who will welcome her. Anyone who wants to learn from the past and right the wrongs.”
When I was was writing about “right the wrongs” I was thinking about the control, the domination, and persecution of women in the past. They were called witches and accused of being evil and in league with the devil. These women who were healers, wise women connected to and living in harmony with nature. Their knowledge and wisdom passed down through generations.
We can’t know how much knowledge and wisdom was lost because of this persecution of women. Many of the women accused and executed for witchcraft have even lost their names, forgotten because no attempt was made to record their names. Their lives considered to have so little value it wasn’t worth recording their existence.
My artwork is of my unknown ancestor. Walking with purpose out of the dark and into the light. Out of the past and into the present. She has confidence and determination. She will be seen and heard. She will be remembered and honoured. I will remember and honour her.
The image shown is an initial sketch for the artwork “My Ancestor” which is a work in progress at present.