Join me for a drink on Saturday November 29 at Manyung Gallery, Mount Eliza.
“We are all filled with a longing for the wild.
There are few culturally sanctioned antidotes for this yearning. We were taught
to feel shame for such a desire. We grew our hair long and used it to hide our
feelings. But the shadow of Wild Woman still lurks behind us during our days
and in our nights. No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is
definitely four-footed.”
Clarissa Pinkola
Estés, Ph. D
Women Who
Run With the Wolves
This body of work is the amalgamation of
inspiration drawn from the written work of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, personal
experience and the resilience of many female creatures of the animal kingdom.
Pinkola Estes in her book Women Who Run with the
Wolves talks about the female psyche by way of folk tales and draws on the
inner animal we all possess. This inner animal - the wild within – enables the
heroines in these traditional folk tales to emerge victorious on the other side
of disaster, danger or despair.
The creative process of this work involves the
meticulous and repetitious action of dotting the paper with tiny ink dots, a
process which serves as a meditation of sorts, a time to harness the wild
within. My technique echoes the patience and persistence required by the female
creatures my subjects represent. I use these methods to convey a sense of
gentle strength in my subjects who subtly hint at a deeper truth.
