A china doll and seaweed

“As you move toward a dream, the dream moves toward you.”

Julia Cameron

At last the seaweed returns to the page, term two, a whole other painting experience. It began with meeting my son for breakfast. He brought me back my cast iron pan he had beautifully restored and I, a little ungratefully wondered how I would manage it alongside everything else I had to carry. It turned out to be a complete blessing. Somehow I had missed the memo to bring in something paint, so cast iron pan it was. An interesting proposition when the tutor has banned black!

“How about progressing some of your own ideas now Mairi? Why don’t you bring some cracked or broken things and start there.“ It was the end of week two and apparently time to branch out. Eek!

What do I have that’s cracked or broken?

The answer came in the shape of my old china doll. Given to me when I was about 5 by an Uncle and Aunt who worked in Malaya as they colonially called it. She’s pretty battered, chipped and cracked and missing a plait and one shoe. Her clothes are worn to threads in some places and her head wobbles. It turned out she was, as my tutor said, perfect. I painted her sitting and lying and then…well something a bit spooky happened.

“Only the head?”

Yup, only the head and a few eggshells. My tutor thought it all a little weird but in a good way so left me to it. I was actually enjoying painting her until my tutor asked,  “what do you think you’ll do next Mairi?”

“I thought I’d do more of my doll.”

“Mmmm, I think you’ve worked with her enough, what about following the fabric theme and seeing where that takes you?”

I rummaged around at home and arrived at the next class with an assortment of fabrics plus a few other let’s say ‘materials’. Rather than paint the whole layout I was encouraged to make myself a viewfinder and move it around till I settled on a composition I liked. My tutor described where I went next as making abstract paintings from source material. Whatever it was, I was in a groove and finally painting with relative peace. I know, hard to believe given the struggle to get here.

“What’s this, and this?”

“Dried kombucha and that, that’s seaweed?”

“Seaweed?”

And so we finally arrive back at the seaweed. That little bit of woven weed had been waiting patiently for it’s time to speak. What happened next was most unexpected, a question popped into my head.

“Why am I painting this beautiful natural thing with these synthetic oil paints? OMG!

In that moment a cosmic quake reconfigured me. Nature had spoken and I was thrust off in a whole new direction.

“Could I make paint out of seaweed?”

“As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears.”

Rumi