Crow Woman

Embodying our inner wild

There has been a winter wind outside all day. The chimes have been tinkling pretty consistently (not like on a still day, when they are set to singing by a cockie being cheeky and tapping on my kitchen window for seed). I love this season. The air is brighter and cleaner and my lungs feel light and unencumbered by humidity and heat. I can rug up, and easy solution to a chilly day (unlike the inability to get cool in the summer), and sleep is sweet and restful under a doona and a blanket hand crocheted by my mum.

I am a winter child. Well, I guess a winter-heading-to-crone. Pretty sure I am not even yet to middle age, but I will happily wear the crone mantle. Oh, only that it would come with a cottage in the heart of the forest (and maybe on chicken legs to boot).

A couple of years ago I began a {wild+woman} project. Empowered by the illustrations I did for

Dr Sharon Blackie

Hagitude: Reimagining the second half of life and the illustration that started it all - my original interpretation of old crane woman from a blog Sharon wrote.

This collection keeps talking to me. 

A print of Raven Woman sits over my art making desk, her eye, the raven’s eye watching approvingly as I lay pigment on surface and sing the song of the wild through paint and pencil. Sometimes I feel raven on my shoulder too, and expect to look up and only see raven-woman alone in the print. Perhaps that sounds like an odd thing to think. Or perhaps I don’t look up quickly enough before that feathered midnight slips back into place on the print. Either way, I would not be surprised to find a black feather floating onto my desk at any time.

Raven Woman was the first in this series, after Crane Woman in two iterations came to being - one for Sharon, one for her book.

The process of this work is finding a face for the elder woman represented. She is older than time, though as beautiful as any elder held to this mortal realm. I think of my grandmothers and grandfather, who were beautiful in body and mind until the end of their time in this reality, and only hope I age with the same grace.

There is beauty in a long life well lived, in hardships and laughter and love and pain and a heart and mind that has circled the sun for decades.

When this wild woman comes to me, her wild being comes as well, because they were always together, after all. And I play with their representations until they fit together like a puzzle, working on form and value with my simple graphite tools until they feel alive in two dimensions and alive in my minds-eye and wild heart.

The magic, though, is the magic of all drawing and sketching and painting, and honestly, if I think about it too long I have been known to get so overwhelmed with wonder and awe that I will become teary.

We are human animals. We are animals. The wild is our kin, we are not apart, we are A PART of this greater Earth together. We are made of the same star dust, and we sleep under the same stars at night. 

But this human animal body of mine can pick up a pencil - a tool usually cased in wood that was once a tree. And I can move pigment around - tiny little marks from one place in space to another - on an essentially flat surface that was also once plants or trees. And I can use my imagination, the stories inside the tree-root like neurons encased in my own animal skull, to make a representation of an elder woman and her wild being. 

It sounds so made up when you think of it like this. Even Sci-Fi can’t imagine something so mundane and singularly profound. It is truly magic that we take for granted every single day. 

Every time you write a story or a poem, every time you make a sketch or a painting or a love letter, or any act of creativity, consider the interconnectedness of the energy inhabiting this beautiful planet, the energy that you inhabit, and your ability to make something that was not there before. Take a breath to appreciate something that was not there before, to look at and embody and feel delighted by something that you or someone else made that was not there before.

Does that give you tingles too? Does it make you feel like you can somehow reach out and touch the incredibleness of it all? That the intimacy and enormity and beauty of it is just within grasp?

You will never convince me that art making, that every human’s innate ability to be creative, is not magic, and something to be celebrated every single day.

While we don’t all make art, I really believe that we each are hardwired to connect to and appreciate it, in our own ways. Like all animals, we have individual likes and dislikes. 

However, when it comes to art, if you find something you connect with, I think you do yourself a great disservice to not try and bring it into your home, your life.

Into a place where it can inspire and delight you, remind you of your own incredibleness, your interconnectedness, your beingness every day.

Crow Woman started life as a commission for a very special human who felt a calling when she saw some of my {wild+woman}. She shared that vision, and like whispers through tree leaves, she passed her vision to me.

With pencil and paper we began conversation, and we found each other, and after thousands of tiny marks coming together, Crow Woman flew from this tiny big island I live on to another island on the other side of this beautiful pale blue dot, and together we will all always be connected. Celebrating ageing and crows, and the artistry of nature (again, of which we are a part).

The prints of Crow Woman have spoken to others now too - others that see and feel the energy she shares, who know that there is a little bit of Crow Woman inside them too, watching the wild outside, loving the wild inside.

This is the gift of art too - that it can be shared as an original piece, and as high quality prints (very limited edition in this case), and as stories and images in a missive like this, and be a powerful tool for connection.

Art - the art I make as well - is meant to be shared. It is meant to be seen, it is made to celebrate the world, to celebrate life, to tell the wild I see you, I am you.

Deep breath. 

Am I rambling? 

Possibly to some, but I suspect that for those of you reading this, it sounds perfectly true.

We are a special lot, I hope you know that. I do not take for granted being with you here, inspired and empowered by the wild and our connection to it all.

In winter the [wild+woman] energy calls to me most loudly. 

Rugged up at this winter solstice time, I am pondering who comes next in this series. Raven Woman, Owl Woman, Fox Woman, Hare Woman, Red-Kite Woman, Heron Woman, Crow Woman. Maybe you know who it is?

I am opening up {wild+woman} commissions.

I am opening up {wild+woman} commissions, just for a short while.

These commissions are a creative lead collaboration (meaning I find her face through artistic conversation with the energy, rather than her being a specific rendering of a real person you know), and you tell me the animal or bird that she is the embodiment of, and what that wild being means to you.

These projects suit birds particularly, and small mammals, as they share vision, an eye. Larger mammals make it impossible to see the wild woman’s face, though I am working on solutions for that. 

If you would like your very own {wild+woman} to guide you, get in touch by responding to this email, or reaching me via natalie@natalieslick.com

The print shop is open until 27th June

If an original {wild+woman} is not for you right now, the print shop is open now for just a week, and there are two sizes of prints for all seven wild women available (though both owl and raven are getting very low). There are also so many beautiful wild beings in colour and graphite tones - especially my favourite owls 🦉

Celebrate the wild inside your beating heart, and the wild outside your house and home.

Embody your inner wild.

And maybe roll your shoulders and unfurl those wings I see hidden there.