Intertwined, prickly, and abundant.
Brambles, hedgerows, and liminal spaces: delicious metaphors for a creative, curious, connected life.
An idea for The Brambles came to me some time ago now, but I wasn’t sure what it looked like, what the format would be, how you would receive all that was entailed. I only knew how it felt.
Let me describe that feeling.
Five years ago now, I decided to honour the curiosity and inextricable pull I had towards creating art. Again. I say again, because until my last year of high-school, I was always going to be an ‘artist’. And then I didn’t become an artist at all, I became an academic and a manager and a human rights volunteer and I became smaller and sadder and less connected with the joy of the natural world every year. Five years ago I gifted myself an artist's retreat in Scotland, and then travelled this magical land a little further afterwards, and when I say magical, I mean that I found magic. The real kind. The kind that makes every cell in your being vibrate with unbridled delight and unabashed fascination. There were inklings through the whole trip, but there was a full body experience that accompanied a walk up The Quiraing on the Isle of Skye, and oh, I get goose-flesh thinking about it even now.
The wind was so strong on the walk that it repeatedly took my breath away - do you know what I mean? A moment of suffocation, winded by wind. It was extraordinary. It was all extraordinary - the sheep dotted sides of the trail, the mossy greens and dark umbers, the stone faces and shale, even the wind. But at the top, looking all over the coastline, I was awestruck. The aforementioned full body experience. I felt like I had stepped through time itself, to stand there and see a vastness of land that was older than humanly imaginable, made of the same star-dust as myself. I felt like I was standing in the tracks of every other person that had been right there at any and every moment in history, completely connected, shared reverence. There were flowing tears, there was heightened electricity coursing rampantly and vibrantly in waves under my skin. The air was alive, and with every breath, I took the exhale of the land inside myself. With every gaze, I took time and stillness and the profound patience of water carving mountains inside myself. With rock and rubble under foot, I took the energy of the aeons inside myself. I held my arms wide and eyes closed, head back, smiled with wind-numbed and tear streaked cheeks, realising I was enveloped by the magic of deep reverential, reciprocal, connectedness.
Deep breath.
When I think about that moment I relive it, though with less intensity than the day itself (thankfully, or I would never get anything done). That moment had a profound impact though, and in conjunction with reading Sharon Blackie’s If Women Rose Rooted just after I returned home, I knew that I would forever be in pursuit of strengthening connection to the land and the non-human kin we share it with. My art making intensified after that trip, and by the end of 2019 I knew that this is what I would be doing for the rest of my life - translating connection, curiosity and wonder from my own wild heart to paper and canvas using pigments, and sharing it with you. I see my work as a conduit for connection.
What does that wide, open landscape have to do with brambles though? My experience on The Quiraing was e x p a n s i v e. It was so large as to be overwhelming. And so coming back to earth, as it were, I realised I found the dark and intertwined nature of brambles and hedgerows, of dense, dark forest canopies, and the mushroom and lichen laden fallen logs of alpine forests more comforting, but no less magical. Prickly and abundant, liminal, enchanting. My creative work focuses on wild creatures and wild landscapes, and that flows from these liminal spaces that feel like home to my heart. More than that, though, the feeling I described above? That, oh that is what I want my artwork to feel like when you see it (though again, perhaps not quite as strongly!), but it is also what I think we deserve to feel more of in our life in general. I certainly deserve it, and so do you. I want to be forever exploring that feeling, that deep connection, and sharing what I find, so that we can walk this wild world together, embracing and embodying those magical feelings, and living a more positive, abundant life as a consequence.
That is what The Brambles will be about. I will touch on my creative ventures, because it is who I am, but this space is to explore all the magic and wonder that comes from embracing the prickly and abundant, liminal and enchanting. It is about creating a purposeful, compassionate, curious and connected life - connected to the natural world, and to you, to this community of like-minded life-lovers. Having a space to share this longer-form writing and be inspired by other writers, as well as the opportunity to comment and connect in one place is a beautiful opportunity. It harkens to the heyday of blogs and beloved blog-readers and community building in the comments. Time to sit and read thoughtful words, not be on an endless (noisy) scroll. I miss that. I am setting no rules for my writing here, I want The Brambles to grow wild and free - the more entangled the better, because life is like that - I only hope these missives offer some inspiration or enjoyment. I can’t wait to get to know you better.
Sending you peace, love, and delicious strawberries,
Natalie xo
“It is what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over.”
~ Mary Oliver
I feel your words and the visions you conjure in my cells. Thank you.
I love this. I especially love the clarity you have about what you are here to do. So looking forward to more.