''to the pure all things are pure''
                                              Jeanette Winterson

'Masks'   acrylic, pastel on paper

I have recently gone through a faze of fascination with Jeanette Winterson's writing. I found many treasures in her books. The quote above comes from the novel ''Oranges are not the only fruit''. It describes, to me a childlike state of expansion, an awe. It made me think of all those times I chose heart over reason, a gut feeling and got myself into trouble. 'Trouble' is a relative term though. And so, my 'troubles' were a necessary intakes of air. Without them life would have been 'safely' stagnant. 

In innocence, you might poke a bug with a stick, climb a tree, put your finger in a fire, tell someone you love them... being alive feels good,  you are curious.

One of the definitions of innocence is: lack of experience with the world and with the bad things that happen in life; purity
Purity is never preconceived.  
We have an instinct to protect what is innocent. Of course, there are some that take advantage of innocence, mistaking it for weakness. While innocence is simple it makes one vulnerable. While cultivating creativity takes persistence and courage, creativity itself is an invitation to play. It is an exercise in reconnecting with what is pure inside you, with whatever have charmed your attention..  
How does that tie up with the pictures here? 
These paintings all came through without a thought. They were not planned, premeditated. I have no commentary, mostly, because it is too personal. I love them, they were an exercise in feeling.  Feeling is not all that rosy sometimes. As humans, we do all sorts of things to avoid feeling, even though our bodies are designed to do just that. Feeling can be spectrum of emotion, from excruciating sadness to ecstatic joy. 
Showing someone your painting is showing them a part of yourself.
Handle with care. 

''Psychedelic moth''   mixed media on paper

Creativity is a playground. A place of infinite secret gardens. How often do we forget to visit ours, or discover a new one?
The unfamiliar can be uncomfortable. But empowering. 
It means having a go at being honest, simple, trusting and seeing what form the life itself wants to take, through you.  

''Gold 'n blue''   mixed media on paper

50 shades of grey of Irish landscape

Irish weather.

 It is impossible to get away from the Irish weather. Though, these days, people do spend most rainy days inside. No need for them to forge or grow anything. No horse or a donkey to feed. You catch my drift. We live in a culture of technology, that 30 years ago was unimaginable. A person had no time, or need to imagine it. They were too busy planting their dinners for the winter. Remember the times of no mobile phones? I am 33 and I remember having no phone at all. Not even a land line. 20 years ago, the  place I work in, sold condoms from under the counter, because it was illegal to use them! How did I move on from the weather to condoms? My monologue rolled down the hill with a little push of the wind.
 The weather here is not dull.  And neither is the land it expresses itself upon. Together they hold focus, they change like woman's mood. You can go outside in a sunshine and come home soaking wet. I talk about the weather with most people I meet. I used to try to avoid it, but the conversation always found me anyway. ''Ah, it's a lovely day today, isn't it?'' Or ''horrible out there, ey?''  The weather can change here 5 times per day.  The chances are, the person you are talking to is as delighted, or fed up, as you. ''50 shades of grey'' would have been a perfect title to describe the Irish weather, but it has been taken. Grey is not a dull colour, we find out from the book. Neither are the shades of Irish landscape. When Sun illuminates this place, it is as if a vale is lifted from a young girls' face, revealing beauty rough and untamed. Beauty hard to miss and harder to describe. There is poetry and music in this landscape impossible to capture, but in song, a painting or a poem. And the same goes for the people here.

I am a Polish bird, and have lived in Ireland for 14 years now. It is enchanting and majestic and other big words that fill my head, but are too serious. I go around with a bit of paper and a brush, and the pictures here are some evidence of it. 

Be patient with me, because I would like to share a piece of literature with you that is compelling. It is written by James Stephens in 1914, or earlier perhaps, and it is called ''The Demi-Gods''. It is absolutely beautifully written. The guy had a great insight into human ways and a really wholesome way of bringing it forth. He speaks about life of a tinker and his daughter and their donkey, as they make their way around the country, in all sorts of weather ;-) . Every native should read this book. It is funny, wise, and makes me wish I was Irish and share in the richness of this country's heritage ...But, I am a 'blow in', and know very little of such things. Be the judge of it your-selves then.   

''He stood outside

of every social relation, and within an organised humanity he might almost have been reckoned as a different species. He was very mobile, but all his freedom lay in one direction, and outside of that pasturage he could never go. For the average man there are two dimensions of space wherein he moves with a certain limited freedom; it is for him a horizontal and a perpendicular world; he goes up the social scale and down it, and in both these atmospheres there is a level wherein he can exercise himself to and fro, his journeys being strictly limited by his business and his family.  Between the place where he works and the place where he lives lies all the freedom he can hope for; within that range he must seek such adventures as he craves, and the soul expansion to which he can attain is upwards towards another social life if he be ambitious, or downward to the underworlds if he is bored.

For Mac Cann there were no upward and no downward movements, he had plumbed to the very rocks of life, but his horizontal movements were bound only by the oceans around his country, and in this gigantic underworld he moved with almost absolute freedom, and a knowledge which might properly be termed scientific.''

''The Demi-Gods by James Stephens 

To wrap it up, some beautiful photos of people, who travelled the roads,  taken from a book by Alen Macweeney. Worth exploring. 

Memories in color

                                            

When I was 6, we moved into old traditional polish cottage. It must have been built around 1940 or 50. By traditional I mean one room plus kitchen, big timber log house with two tiny windows. Old tiled furnace in one corner of the room. There was a shed where the animals used to live, attached to the house. It became a storage space for 'everything else' and later became my dark room. No, it was not a place of dark magic. Just alchemy. The only place in the house I had some privacy, and also my photography studio. And by that I mean a bit of space amongst other clutter, a bit of a clear counter to put the trays on and a line to hang the photos from, to dry them. There was no heating there. I loved it. I loved that, somehow I made the best out of this crazy, hostile space. This is a good memory. I feel proud of good memories. Us, people, have this ability to survive unimaginable situations. And we can change the way we think about them. In time. 

No one lived in this house for who knows how long, before we moved in, and so, the post communistic fingers of modernisation did not touch it. While people around began enjoying comforts of bathrooms, we still had an outhouse. Piles of hay were waiting for many years in the attic for some cow to eat it, and is probably still sitting there for all I know.

Above is my depiction of our bathroom, when I was growing up and until I was 20 years old. It was a corner in a kitchen, with a bucket, chair, a basin. A rustic take on a concept of a wash room. Through coloured glass of memory, the child I was then, is seeing with a different eye. These were not ordinary objects, like no object is ordinary when it becomes a witness. If the stones could talk, we would hear their stories of footsteps, storms, wet bodies moulding to their shape. The history of the human kind and beyond, told in wind, sound of waves, blemishes burned into the surface, all recorded in a form of a stone.

These are my personal black boxes. The story they tell is neither romantic nor poetic. The only wind I can think of being 'recorded' in my black boxes is that of my father 'passing wind'. Excuse my crudeness. What would this bucket say? Would it tell stories of cold arses in the winter? Would it remind me of smelly contents of its life? Yes, it is what you think.. When you are little and it's -17C outside, in the middle of the night, the bucket comes in handy... 

The basin...It was brown enamel, my first boyfriend washed my hair in it, pouring water from a jug down my neck, head, and long hair. The sensual basin. The practical basin. Where I mastered the art of body washing economy. My first experience of Yoga was this basin, because I learned to fold myself in half, just to fit into it. The silent basin, that kept my parents' secrets.

Light was rare and timid on the wall behind the stand. I still remember the texture of the wall. Old wall, it seamed hundreds of years old to me then. In this small, kept together by intention only cottage, the feeling was of something crumbling away. 

 Nature of change is reliable. My thoughts, memories, emotions flow and alter with time. Amazing thing about paintings, you will never look at one with the same eyes. I gave you a glimpse of my story of these. You will have your own. It is a very nice thought.  

Enjoy your day:-)