This is a bit of a long one, so I have also recorded audio if you would prefer to listen instead. Or why not do both, as the ad says. I also made a little video of me rambling while I am drawing, so arenโt you feeling lucky! I only do it because you deserve it, truly.
Alright, ready? Settle in. Letโs chat.
Where do I begin? I feel like we have so much to catch up on.
Sit with me a moment in that sort of quiet conversation that feels so good to our bodies and souls, full of deep breaths inhaling green, and the gentle whisper of wind in our ears and kissing our cheeks.
It is winter, now. Where I am winter is fairly brief and not very cold at all. But it is our proper winter, now. I love it. I love that I need to get warm instead of wanting to peel back layers of skin to get away from the heat. I love that I can snuggle in bed and sleep deep and nourishing sleep instead of laying in a pool of sweat, cranky and uncomfortable. As it does not last too long, I revel in it - though I wish the days were a little longer. That too will change before I know it - already the sun sets a little later and rises a little earlier and I am at my easel in dawnโs early light rather than the cool dark.
I have been wonderfully busy, working with a group of amazing artists in Hedgerow, digging deep into the how and why of making art, and beginning to prepare for the next opening of The Wild Sketchbook (and planning delicious new additions for this round). That is the fun stuff - all the admin stuff, well it is important and necessary and I love it for the fact that it supports my businessโฆbut I would much rather be making art.
It is surprising how little art you get to make when you are a full time one-woman-creative-entrepreneur-artist, and lately I have been struggling to find the spark that lights me up - that spark that gets me to the easel before anything else.
It seems my creative well was a little parched. I was creatively, artistically, dehydrated.
On the weekend we travelled five hours west of the coast to the place my dad was born and grew up. I got to watch the delight of remembrance in the eyes of this man I adore, who climbed trees and paddled canoes and ran errands for his parents' small town general store. I got to see where he laid his childhood head to sleep, where my beloved Nan washed up and made meals and ran the store, and where she and Poppy grew their market garden. We deduced the large, gnarled and bare unknown tree in what was in his once-upon-a-time backyard was actually a walnut tree he planted two years before leaving - now mature and over 60 years old and bearing nuts, a couple clinging to the tree, more in the long grass below it. What a gift.ย
(a sneak peek of what else is to come in this missiveโฆincluding me drawing this baby!)
I started to viscerally feel the effect of seeing a different landscape to my daily walks and backyard starting to fill my creative well.
Subtle changes in green, a reddening of the soil, the sea salt in the air left behind on the coast - a new scent, dry but fertile. The wide streets and colonial architecture of old rural towns. Laden citrus trees in every other backyard. And a new-to-me species of parrot bringing me utter delight to see, all spring green and turquoise and red-rumped.
But the next day, oh, my well filled to the brim, overfull and sweet and so nourishing to be almost incredulous.
I have very mixed feelings about zoos.ย
I have very mixed feelings about zoos.ย
I know that seemed like a hard right, but bear with me.ย
I loathe that we keep wild beings in captivity - I loathe that we have put our kin in such a precarious position in their natural environments that they are critically endangered and require genetic conservation. It makes me furious and desperately sad. I loathe the history of zoos before they became centred on conservation, and I loathe that so many zoos worldwide do not have conservation at their core anyway.
I saw a zoo in Ecuador that brought me to tears - a jaguar pacing in an enclosure lucky to be three metres in length, a desperate dread and disconnect in her eyes that I felt in every fibre of my being, and I was helpless to give her what she so deserved as a basic right. I loathe that so many of us human animals see our more than human relatives as entertainment, as things that can be bought and sold and caged and worse.
And I also know that when we see with our own eyes the wild beings that carry the same untamed-wild in their hearts as we do, breathe the same air they breathe, hear their sounds - paws and feet and hooves on the same ground we too are standing on, excited or annoyed huffing and humming, chewing and gnawing and crunching and cudd-ing, yowling and howling and yipping - we get to connect in a different way.ย
David Attenborough works wonders, to be sure but to see them with your own eyes, to take them into your body through sight, to share moments of eye-to-eye contact, well, as animals primed for socialisation and community, we make a much deeper connection than we can through tv screens. It is in that connection where change starts - right? It is always in connection - seeing a bit of ourselves through their experience, and wanting a bit more for them, until more and more of us become committed to singing their songs in some way. Learning about them, getting curious, wanting to learn to draw them, wanting to have artwork or photos of them hanging in our homes, wanting to protect their wild habitats. It is to be reminded that we are not alone in this big wild world, we are not apart from our Earth, we are a part of it.
Three years ago I created an artwork of three African Wild Dogs.
Three years ago I created an artwork of three African Wild Dogs. (Can you spot my Sweet Violet, wanting to know why there were dogs on the coffee table?)
On Sunday I got to see their kin - four sisters - in real life, and I thought I might die from the joy of it. I know it would be unlikely for me to ever see them any other way, given how critically endangered they are, and I am so grateful for that gift.
For the few brief moments of eye to eye contact I got, for the time I spent watching how the patterns on their fur changed depending on their movements, for seeing how they wagged their tails when excited, for how their ears spoke so much about what was happening with their external dynamics as well as their internal emotions. How they quickly reduced a large hunk of feed to nothing-left-behind, and how they rolled in the grass in something no doubt deliciously disgusting.
I got to revel in and celebrate their utter beingness, and to love and honour them with every fibre of my being. A recognition, a connection that even still brings tears to my eyes with the power of it.
The day was full of moments like these, and on the way home the next morning I got to remember my why. The reasons why I am called to do what I am doing, why it is so important to me, and where I am forgetting my why in my business and daily life, to my own detriment.
But also how bloody important it is to prioritise my passion, my purpose, and my joy.
I had already slated a challenge for my community in Hedgerow for the month of August, and I had already decided I was going to give myself an addition to that challenge to stretch me artistically, and also to stretch me in my fundraising capacity. I have been a part of and instigated a lot of very successful fundraising over the years, but none since organising Art for Fires in 2020 which raised over $20,000 for rural fire brigade andย wildlife rescue organisations.ย
As I was recently accepted as a new member of Artists for Conservation (yayy!), I also knew that I wanted to make fundraising a big part of my core business and artistic ethos too, and so this is where I am starting.
Through the month of August I am challenging myself to make a lot of beautiful graphite honourings of our wild kin, and donate 20% of sales to a very special wildlife rescue organisation doing amazing things for their local wild kin (more on them later). Today is the first, a black rhino, from one of my own photos.
When I work I slip into a timeless, light, almost spaceless-space. There is a weightlessness, and anxieties and fears gain a perspective that is hard to achieve when you are immersed deep in them. It is me, my pencil, my subject and the cellular memory of all wild things from the dawn of time to now. Shared herstory.
It is a deep and abiding place of reverence, connection, and utter wonder, and it is the sort of self care and self compassion that replicates and strengthens the more it is honoured. When I recognise that after a deep creative session (during it, all sense of language is fluid and secondary), I question how I can allow anything else to seem more important, to prioritise anything else over this personally important work. And then I remember that we are complex and complicated beings entrenching in a capitalist patriarchal society that values productivity over everything else, with creativity being way down on the bottom.
Sigh.
I think we are changing that narrative, slowly, tentatively, but it is hard to get out of that well practised record groove, isnโt it!ย ย
So August is now Wild August. I hope you will cheer me on with my quest of creating wildly heartfelt portraits of our incredible kin, and if you would like to join me in honouring the wild every day this month - whatever that looks like for you - then I would love to hear all about it.ย
I am always just a reply away.
Natalie, I giggled out loud when I read about your comfort level with heat. I know we have talked about it before and we are right in the middle of our summer. It has been humid as hell, girlfriend!! Over the last week or so, I feel like I am trying to sleep in a bathtub full of water, the air is so heavy. Ugh. I LONG for fall!! I, too, am not a fan of zoos or circuses, etc. Thank you for looking out for our animal kin and for capturing their beauty. XO
Thank you Natalie, for reminding us again of what matters most. And thank you for the African Wild Dogs, such beautiful beings, those ears!