Spirit Guides

Spirit Guides , 2019
Mixed Media Collage
66 cm x 91 cm

Ever since my mother passed I have noticed all the animals that show up – especially when I visit her grave. Sometimes they hang around for quite a while… they look at me. First, it was a coyote… a skunk, a robin, a cardinal… 20 black squirrels practically pouring out of a tree (I gasped). I like to think through them she is watching over me. I call on her energy to guide and heal my family. At the time of the Cacao Ceremony, I was feeling very low. After the sudden death of my mother, and struggles with my Dad in his grief, I was depressed and lost, struggling to keep afloat in the turbulent sea of life. I didn’t feel creative. I wanted some form of escapism – which as a recovered addict can be dangerous, but I wanted to be in an altered state to escape my life. In the ceremony, I envisioned a red fox which led me down a path to my mom, on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and we just held each other. I could feel her body. I could smell her. We said nothing, we just looked out to sea… where my dad appeared to us on a stone bed in a floating mausoleum… The maximalist collage evokes a darkly mysterious vision of death, sex, birth, renewal, and spiritual awakening – all swirling in a pagan night forest, where goddesses and witches dance with their familiars, and merge with the Divine. Under a stormy-to-clear sea and sky morphing as one, ruled by the Spirit Guides who watch over us. Using a painterly approach with the materials, and layered hidden imagery, which include: pages from the cruise magazine which my Mom died on last year, and books from my Dad’s when I was clearing out his junk, and other images obsessively collected over the last 5 years.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the opening of the Visions from Mama Cacao and the Earth Goddess exhibition at Urchin Wines , in response to Cacao Ceremonies at The Chamomile Clinic.