The inspiration for this quilt emerged during the current season, spring into summer 2024, the time of year that draws blooms of all varieties into magnificent manifestation. The warratah (telopea speciosissima) in our native bush lands always evokes awe and appreciation of our environment. I’ve made several attempts to grow a commercial variety in my garden without success. It was also the time when I received the news of the passing of a very special person, a man who had come into my life in the last few years who was a special love in my life.
As part of my still life series, I was a concerned about presenting them as cut flowers, because it is not permitted to take them from the bush. Here they float with ease full of beauty-fullness surrounding a moon that has waxed into her monthly periodic fullness. No wonder she represents the creative power of women.
The silver vase sits ready to receive the beautiful creations of the bush after they have waxed into their fullness and dropped to Mother Earth. I had created another vase based on a glazed ceramic I’d recently acquired, but it went back in the folder for later inspiration. It occurred to me that the vessel may appear to be one for containing the ashes of a cremation. But here it is collecting the Waratah seeds forming for the next bush generation, for the continual procreation of this beauty. Each piece is outwardly a design that encompasses the elements of composition, colours, and other artistic details. But they always have more to say if I look closely and listen to my inner soul story carefully. During the creative process material manifestations emerge from the personal, making the link between reality in the search for meaning. In this case it was the passing between the veils of a dearly loved man who had recently come into my life bringing home a sense of personal love and fullness I’d never before experienced. The initial peach beside the vase is a metaphor: the fruitful flesh of ripeness is not a permanent state: change is the regular cycle of birth, coming to fullness, needing to move towards decay to return to rebirth and renewed fullness. Extra peaches were added as a last thought for several reasons, from the personal to the creative process that endlessly moves through the cycle of change and promise by the waxing and waning - we feel it in our own lives and see it in all life.
The silver vase sits ready to receive the beautiful creations of the bush after they have waxed into their fullness and dropped to Mother Earth. I had created another vase based on a glazed ceramic I’d recently acquired, but it went back in the folder for later inspiration. It occurred to me that the vessel may appear to be one for containing the ashes of a cremation. But here it is collecting the Waratah seeds forming for the next bush generation, for the continual procreation of this beauty. Each piece is outwardly a design that encompasses the elements of composition, colours, and other artistic details. But they always have more to say if I look closely and listen to my inner soul story carefully. During the creative process material manifestations emerge from the personal, making the link between reality in the search for meaning. In this case it was the passing between the veils of a dearly loved man who had recently come into my life bringing home a sense of personal love and fullness I’d never before experienced. The initial peach beside the vase is a metaphor: the fruitful flesh of ripeness is not a permanent state: change is the regular cycle of birth, coming to fullness, needing to move towards decay to return to rebirth and renewed fullness. Extra peaches were added as a last thought for several reasons, from the personal to the creative process that endlessly moves through the cycle of change and promise by the waxing and waning - we feel it in our own lives and see it in all life.
Jarod Anderson wrote: "..reality lives somewhere between matter and meaning. One makes us. The other we make to bear our mortality and the confusions of being alive." (from Something in the woods loves you).
I certainly experience this loving connection when in my garden and the bushland at my backyard, which contains the cycle of life in all it's various forms - other than peaches!
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| Waxed into fullness: waned into darkness (19x15") |
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