Silence

so I have been thinking. I think we women need to reclaim our space. The feminists were right! I have been thinking about art and galleries and history and what is accepted by the establishment.

I am talking about our silence, our willingness to accept outer conditions of beauty and artfullness that come from an intellectual level. The mind (our own mind). The mind puts conditions and wants meaning and thought and wants to control.  I remember being in art collage looking through the history books and the vast majority were men. Now I know this is old news and I was angry then but I recently had a realisation that women let them do this. The men set up establishments that they considered very important and set up rules of painting and how to’s and what not to’s and said that anything that wasn’t accepted by them was not good art. (i know I am sweeping the whole of history with a very big brush here) and the thing is we believed them! we women started to try to be like them to get into the establishments they set up. Think about an alternative history where women respected their own womenhood and supported each other. Look at native american tribes or aboriginal tribes where the men and the women each have rich separate connections and rituals that honour and value the validity of being male and being female as well as connecting as a whole tribe.

If european history had had that how different would it be now?  It also took men to break  out of the rules at the end of the 19th century with Van Gogh and Gaughain and Monet and Picasso and all the groundbreakers from that time and yes there were women then too but where are they now? why are they not household names known by everyone?

I know whoever is reading this might be thinking this is a bit of a rant but this was a big revelation to me. As Paul asked me last night, (after he was contemplating ants and they didn’t even know he was there) what is so big I can’t even see it. So on a personal level  how have I been trying to fit with a male view of art and self expression, without even realising it.

There are women out there following their own path and I wish them all the good luck and energy in the world because it is hard. Looking at Ireland right now and there seems to be a fashion for intellectual art that ‘means’ something. When it is good they are meaningful and insightful and I love seeing them and pondering them but there is the other side too that we must honour and maybe it is time to create it ourselves. People have the buying power, women have the buying power!

I love the women artists I am finding on the web, and all the quilting and stitching shows, especially in the states are totally inspiring. They have gone past the functionality of the humble quilt to a piece of art work that shines with power. I love when I find beauty and true self expression whether it be male or female. because that what it comes down to, if we deny the female it doesn’t matter what sex we are, we are only living half a life.  Its so important for us women to speak out and be vocal and make our lives how we want it, for ourselves first but also if the women are silent then the whole community is only living half a life.

The female is fluid and limitless, creating new life, bringing forth, breaking boundries and overflowing the old. She is death because to create something new you have to say goodbye to the old. She is darkness because the seed needs darkness to germanate before bursting forth in new life. She is light because light flows everywhere. She nutures and guides and holds and encourages with no reservations, no rules apply, nothing is to little to be passed over.

The male is structure and buildings and solidity, the male brings forth the dreams and the creativity of the female and gives it form. Shapes it with tools and thinks up new ways of forming and controlling substances to hold the creation of the female. Builds buildings, creates laws,  sees limits, names things, puts order on chaos,

The male is lost in the pure fluidity and surging of life of the female and the female cannot function in the pure laws and structure of the male. We are all male and female, it is our job to balance the two.

ok, hope any of this makes sense. I know its a bit of a ramble. It makes sense in me but sort of in a round soft shape that is hard to put words on. It is a feeling of freedom for me, a sense of a whole other place that is there to be explored that I really didn’t value before. A place that is very open and welcoming and warm. Women have to find this place first because we are closer to it and then when we honour it and honour ourselves and each other then it doesn’t matter what the ‘establishment’ wants, we have our own place of power.

x clio

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