Here comes Red

Madeleine is dancing in her white dress and swirling her red silk about her, I try to capture the light on her with my camera and its lense....... This image appears before me and I feel lucky to have a camera, a lense and a daughter who swirls just so, in mid morning light.

Red is here again!

There is always a little red around, in my home and in my studio. But, for the longest time it has been subtle, a small point of interest, to warm up a page, to accent a blue, or deepen a yellow.
Not now, I have noticed lately it is not so quiet anymore. This color is coming in and all about, abounding in its vitality. Its Autumn too now after all! The apples are back again, falling again, and the last of summer's flowers are blooming, bloomed, blown.

Madeleine feels it too: ) She is choosing her red clothes. Though we are both influencing each other I am sure, as are these flowers, how can they but influence us too?

What a beautiful year its been for wild flowers here, I have noticed them like never before here. 

When I lived and loved in the Pyrenees I marveled at the meadows in early summer, lamenting that we had nothing of the sorts back home, but I may have had my irish flower blinkers on. 

Its been a color show here all summer, with so much to inspire. 

These ones Madeleine had picked from my Dads garden. 

I adore color!!!! As an artist its my medium. Color first, then the paint. Color. Colour, Coleur.

I mentioned in a previous blog, I have been reading Chroma by Derek Jarman a poetic and poignant account of a man loosing his sight. From beginning to end one is taken on an unforgettable color path, sometimes hurtled through history and theory of how we see and perceive color, to pigment making. And then at other times dropped deeply into blues, softly into pinks and around again. Then awoken, into greens, with a breath, and a reminder that this man is dying as he writes.
Its been an intense read, and heightened for me an awareness that was already amplified, in a rediscovered and utter love affair of color.

How do they exist. And How is it we see this wonderful dream?

Red is all about action. In color therapy, it is a color of doing, all fired up and ready to go!
A sensual color, a color of connection with the body and aliveness, of your earthly state. Its a color of strength and of course also the color of anger "seeing red". Anger after all is very active, depending on how it is directed.

Interestingly, I never put much red on Madeleine before this year. I felt it such a strong color for a little girl, but now perhaps she has grown into it. She does feel so strong these days and has grown up so much over the summer.


Here is a a little glimpse of some works in progress, whats happening in the studio. Reds and warm tones coming up and in and out through just about everything I am making........

I am ready to make things happen with a kind of strength, knowing what I want to do finally.
I have been preparing things, working away bit by bit, step by little step and been far more patient then I have ever been about my life unfolding before.

Now its time to take a greater step with my work, a steady one. I have contacted printers and framers and I am preparing my first works for sale and finishing other works.
I have laid down the plans of a bigger project that my heart is singing about each day that I think about it. That will be what the red is all about!

Last night I dreamt I was a magician teaching people to walk on air. Like my elephant dreams, I can still feel it as if its real. I can feel the sensation of stepping into space, and assuredly smiling to those around me as I did, that it was safe to do so.

It takes faith and trust on my part to stay with this. A leap of faith in a direction unknown, that I can provide for us from my art, by being true to my big red heart and staying on the path.
Ach we are always on the right path really, how can we be off it? We are simply where we are, finding our way, no matter how long it takes us. Time is even irrelevant to the matter, that we find our way.

And along the way I had the amazing luck of finally finding a recored player to play my old vinyl. I couldn't have asked for a better one. Me and Pj picked it up in Dublin a couple of weeks ago, he kindly carried it a long way for me, back to our tram stop. I could hardly wait to get it home.

When I say vinyl, I mean old vinyl from when I was a kid.
My soundtrack these days is just about right with red, from Maria Callas in Tosca to The kids from Fame, and Starmaker. Its been a trip and a half. I am also enjoying Kate Bush on vinyl again, and also her new album The director's cut, which I would highly recommend. I would have written 'highly' up somewhere very high to illustrate just how wonderful an artist she is, if I could; ) Another sweet and beautiful album I have listened to lately is by Ergo, and is called Bell Fable- more from the deep heart.

So now I am seeking a red dress to paint in: ) to celebrate and create and to dance about in with Madeleine whilst playing records!!!!

So do tell me what colour you love, how is it to love that color, I would love to know!!!!!

And, As always Thank you dear reader xx

E

I have been playing and reading and visiting museums. Not half bad for a summer holiday.... I have not being blogging though!

.......Its a richness of new information and experience thats exciting to me now. This summer I have been a veritable sponge for new sights and sounds, words and thought. I have been particularly in love with seeing great books illustrated, ancient drawings and colorful plates from thousands of years ago....in museums.......and researching, for and I have been reading. Which, has been up till now, such a difficulty or me these last couple of years, but for poetry. My own life seemed fictitious for a while in its drama and tragedy, that I think I found it so difficult to pick up any one else's story...... Ah but now, its a wonder to me again, to sit with a book and read, and feel such genuine interest and excitement.
To delve into the Library is a favorite for me and little Madeleine right now, she is going through an obsession with  Beatrix Potter, and wants herself to be a writer and illustrator now, I am delighted, its a good dream: ) She has asked me to dress her like olden days and has been wearing white a lot and carrying her umbrella about.

I am presently reading Derek Jarman's book Choma, a book about color written by him as he was loosing his sight. Its beautiful and profound to say the least and also very poetic in its structure.
Of course I have also been enjoying the lovely blogs around here, and making new bright connections, finding sisters, in all manners of places: )

.........We are packing up the car today, and taking a little adventurous trip, visiting some friends and family, and doing sundances in the rain praying for a couple of sunny days at the beach before we return to school.

In these pics we are birds, did you guess??? flying off edges and soaring into new ways and having tremendous fun in the doing of it. I am dreaming of coming back and beginning in the studio again. With summer and school holidays, I have had sweet Madeleine by my side all summer, and have had little chance to get down there. But filling up on the richness of life with Madeleine and beloved friends has made me such a mountain of new threads in all colors to make new works with and finish old.
And, to write here with!!!!!

Thank you Dear Reader

xx E