Moving!

I have moved blogspots, I had to really, I wanted to make it all new and shiny : )

Its here www.elizabethcarringtonart.blogspot.com do come over for a visit!!!!!!! I am building a new nest there.

When I began the Elisheva blog, it was part of a project, I called it elisheva, as it means Oath of God, and I was taking an oath with myself, that I was determined and committed to making Art again, and then a project, because I had no idea where it was all going.

Now that I do, it feels much more finite and true and to be in some fruition having put so much work into it. I have also decided to work under my own name now too.

I so look forward to catching up with ye all again, and will slowly but surely go and read up on all your wonderful worlds.

xx E

Things are shakin up around here : )

Watch this space.

If you have been following me a while, you will have realized by now I have a case of BTCS ( Blogger Template Changer Syndrome: )   ? .......This is really just me thinking ahead of when I have my work on here to sell, and have tried all these different templates to see how they feel and if they work for me.

One fine day I will have my own website too, but for now this is fantastic!

Well its been a year and a bit since I got on here and its all about to happen soon. I have to do the work now and set up the shop and then link it here. Exhibition opens tomorrow with six of my drawings and once that is done I will concentrate on the next step.

busy days its seems, I am out a lot and not getting much new work made. But back soon.

Thanks dear reader for dropping by

xx E

In search of Riches Here and There

What a squelchy muddy winter, and rain and rain and rain again.

Till yesterday when Spring began here in Ireland, with the celebration of Brigid's day. It was as bright as a summer morn. The sun rose so clear over the mountains, radiant like it was new born. The soft pink sky greeted me and M as we made our way to school. She wondered if the clouds had been reminded that Spring had come. For the longest time the clouds have hugged our hills.

St. Brigid is said to pass over the country on the eve of her celebration day blessing the earth by spreading a beautiful blue cloak over the land. There are all sorts of wonderful traditions about it. Blue is a strong color it seems ..........One should tie a piece of blue fabric to your back door and it will be blessed. Then with any aches and pains during the year you rub it over for an instant earth mamma miracle: )
Little M made butter in school for an offering table dressed in white cloths and crosses made of rushes. I was taken aback at just how beautiful it was, in its greens and whites and candles lit.
Simple and soulfull!

I have been in search of color and light too here at home. Being one for detail in my work these days. I have been planning some new paintings and need lots of new texture and pattern ideas, and decided to look no further then here and there.

Here .......Home

And there

Oh I love these contrasts, AM VERY EXCITED!!!!!

I will also have some work in an exhibition next week, once I have a link I will post it here. 

Thank you dear reader

xx : )

E

Oh my ...... its wild today!!!

I may start all new posts now with Oh My.

I am quite sure I have picked it up from 'Ma ' in the laura Ingalls Wilder books which we have been immersed in all winter long. I can feel a yearning too for long calico dresses. Though in this winter weather its flannel and wool for sure. That may not be ' Ma's influence though, more likely all those beautiful dress clad lassies I have met here blogging. Whom you will find all neatly listed to the right!

I went out to meet the wind. I walked to the lake to see its tempest. 

I returned tousled and tangled but invigorated and ready to draw..........

I almost didn't get up to meet this day, I thought of saying to little M, Lets have a wind day! We have had no snow days this year, perhaps we need a wind day, where we just stay cozy by the fire and read.

The wind howling about the house, shrieking around corners, swaying the lovely trees, I cant help but wish for sunshine now. I have appreciated the monotones.... but its time.

It whistles now through the keyholes and doors being all squally and wild.

I was tempted away from my drawings today, though they are bright for sure. I have just been writing to too Grand Aunts, long overdue. One in Australia, and my namesake, and one here in Ireland, who calls me sunshine: )
Both strong beautiful ladies, that bore the limitations of their generations with rebellious natures but also with both grace and fortitude that saw them through it.
They have shared some of their wilder days with me, in snippets of stories and tales quietly mentioned, in what must have once caused blushing cheeks. Like riding on the handlebars of a boyfriends bicycle through the streets of Paris, when ladies did no such thing. And, skinny dipping in the rain in wild little beaches to the west. I can't say another thing, or I will be in trouble for sure; )

Such satisfaction in a hand written letter, stamp and envelope, all together a tiny parcel of moments shared and given. Ach I love it, I think I shall have to make a letter day.

................. and now............... Back to work !!!!

 No Monotones here!!!

I can never last without color for long!

Thanks dear reader

xx E

Well Oh My Winter Sun

Here

..............I am exceedingly delighted to be here in front of this open fire, with two feet, red sock clad, soaking in the warming glow of flames and embers and all things imaginably warming in winter weather. I am happy, I have a lightness and a sense of arrival tonight. A gentle flicker of gold fills my heart as I recount and recall these last few weeks. I can rest now, I can be here in my new home.

I love it, in fact I may be in Love with it. These walls, so old and stony and sure, are holding me as kindly as any warm blooded fella could. And when that winter sun shines and silvers up the lake, reflecting light through every pane of glass, the fire crackles to let me know we are here together.

Today was the first day I could paint, having finished unpacking and being almost done with all the other bits and bobs associated with moving all and sundry.  

We have adjusted to being here. It was a trying few weeks, to move before Christmas. I would never move in winter again, I can quite see why its not usual. I learned the hard way, and I think it added twice the stress to it all. But we rose to it, and its done.

We had a quiet Christmas, just unpacking enough to get us through. Our old potted Christmas tree from Tristan and Jenny came back to us to bejewel another year and Christmas eve my sister came, and we made a ginger bread house( my first attempt).
We decided it was more like some of the run down cabins we saw in the Appalachians, it had a rustic feel to it rather then the cleaner lined scandinavian style; ) It was delicious all the same, and we made it gluten free too. The eating of it seemed about the most moorish thing in the whole holiday, but we had help.

Little M has found her new places to play outside and in, making a little house under the stairs with a sheepskin and silks and her little pots and pans, I would live there too if I was her size and a new fountain to run around too.
I haven't taken many photos yet of here, but this is one of her watching out at two crows, dating she said, sitting on the wall and kissing beaks.

She has a great space for play here and to keep her toys, and we can have animals too, which we have both pined for a while, as much as we love our Patches and Nutmeg( guinea pigs).
We have sent out our wishes with shiny pennies in ponds on starry nights And turning three times under new moons, for a puppy to come and join us. I am trying to hold off till Spring, till I can have a breather before the next big event, but little M's enthusiasm is bound to bring some little bright thing into our lives before we know it.

.......................Its big here and has a kind of grandeur about it, but at the same time holds this old barn feel to it, it keeps its modesty and has lots of depth. I saw possibilities here for my art and my life to take steps forwards and expand a little, like wings that needed to stretch out. I can live, work and show my art here.
I will open the studio from equinox to equinox, and have 'visitors welcome' written on my gate and we shall see what comes. I have missed online here, this space, and the lovely friends I have met and the tracking of their logs. I wore Milla's medicine pouch almost through the whole month of moving. Her beautiful dreamcatcher hangs over my bed easing my dreams to the lighter side even under the stress of it all............

...........For Now I prepare in these Winter sun days ...

........................and nights where that sun comes through fire on wood, from trees that stretched up and took that sun in. They bless me with their warmth, toasting my toes and helping me remember the way things are.

Winter Sun Moments

We made a trip to Fanore, a tiny village on the west coast a few weeks before we moved. We stayed in a place looking over the sea for two nights. We played on the beach and watched the resident dolphin play with the surfers and visited a bird of prey education centre.
We were also just opposite the grave yard where the poet, philosopher, teacher John O'Donohue was buried. He is a mighty inspiration to me. His writing transports and transforms and holds you and your heart, it breathes you in, and you breathe it too. I met him once when I was about 12 years ago and never forgot him, He had peaceful shiny eyes like none I had ever seen, and I wanted to know more about that. He died just a couple of years ago, he was just 53 and in Paris.
Me and M visited his grave, and sat there a while while the morning sun shone out to the islands bright and clear, and around us too, warming us just enough so that the sea air didn't bite our noses.

Good night and thank you dear reader.

More Art and Heart soon ...... perhaps even some prints to sell, I wont give too much away just yet
xx

E

"Benedictus"

 For a New Beginning

 In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

John O' Donohue

I could never say it as beautifully as John did!

                                   

                                                                                  














xx E

Dutiful daughter

I remember years ago reading Memoirs of a  Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir. I might have been 19 years old, and was going through some big changes in my life. I was enthralled with it especially with a passage that I have never forgotten. I have no longer the book but will try to recount it as best I can: ) 

She writes of herself maybe about 6 years old, same as little M. She is playing in the Jairdins de Luxebourg in Paris. Her Nanny is watching over her whilst she is playing by the fountain( I have visited this fountain particularly searching for this spot ).
Suddenly, and compleletly out of nowhere she feels a sense of her own existence in the Universe. In a moment she is at once completely entranced, excited, overwhelmed and then finally terrified. She runs to her nanny's lap in tears. The kindly nanny thinks she has fallen or fought perhaps with another child and tries to comfort her, asking her what it is that has upset her so.
This little Simone cannot for the life of her explain what she feels. She doesn't have the words at six years old to express a bit of it, and simply wails. Somehow though within her little tiny self, she vows to remember that moment of feeling, and that when she is grown she will always remember that children can feel this way and have a real sense of these huge aspects of being alive, with no means to express it all.
She does all that just by feeling.

Sometimes I feel like little Simone De Beauvoir, about six years old and overwhelmed at being alive. All the majesty of mystery around me, not knowing what is next and what can change. Life is exciting to me now, and still a little terrifying. But its the terrifying bits that interest me most, they hold the nuggets of real understanding. I too have a feeling that everything is about to change again, and a new chapter is opening in my life. Maybe its just speculation, but I think I am finding myself in here. I never had a real notion what that meant. Perhaps I will once I am found: )Maybe whilst in the finding its just a feeling.

Fear is an amazing teacher. And it can be a good friend when viewed in a certain light, the kind of light that comes with a compassionate view of oneself.

night night dear reader

xx E