Painting the heart of the myth

“Have you ever considered writing about how you can tap into something so much bigger than yourself? I’ve just been on your red bubble and I continue to be amazed and delighted by how you can so eloquently paint the heart of myth. It is as if each of your pieces is a poem. Susanne Ilse”

Following this wonderful email from Susanne at Bonesinger, whose work I admire greatly, (and check out her post on Irish stone spirits in the irish arts blog) I sat down to write this response.

Myths are stories spun in and around our life to give richness and meaning to those everyday things we often take for granted. A Myth conotates something grander than a mere fairytale. A Myth is bigger than we are, it is what we aspire to, what we can dream towards and they are always set in the far past, unconnected to today to emphasis the otherworldness of the heroes, heroines, gods, goddesses.

Maybe Myths scare society a little, if they were true they would upset the safety of reality and a rule based society, maybe that’s why they are always in the past or in another world or set in a world beside ours that touches it occasionally but doesn’t quite meet. They are uncontrollable and unsafe, they break boundaries and rules. Gravity does not have power in a myth, neither does age, time, space or simple laws of what humans are and are not capable of.

We have been separated from our own Myths, from our own power, we have given away possibility in favour of a safe existence from cradle to grave. We accept what we are told about life, about our bodies and about our minds and we are hooked by the big ‘I AM’, we think personal power is having control, of ourselves and the world around us. But in myths the heroes and heroines have no control, they are spun by the threads of destiny and they have to drop what they think they want and suddenly everything flows forward and they are successful. There is always a struggle before the dropping of the mind.

I want to live my own Myth, I want to see what happens when I drop control and let it all flow… and this is what I do every time I create something, I try as best I can in that moment to drop control and see what happens. We all do this as artists, that feeling of flowing, of effortless creation and when its finished you look and your mind is surprised and a little in awe of ‘I did this’. Truth is though ‘I’ didn’t do it I merely got out of the way and it happened all by itself.

I am getting better at the getting out of the way bit and as I do I get closer to how I dream my pictures. A new freedom, a new level of letting go, a new style and a new trust in my voice, no comparisons and no competition. It is freeing and it is scary and it is living from the heart. Living each moment surrounded by the grandness of the Myth, by possibility instead of facts, by the wonderfulness of the fact we are here instead of mundane worries, by the connection to life as an endless river and we are here for the ride and to learn how to swim, without struggling, straight to the sea.

Thanks Susanne for the inspiration to write this, we need reminding of this sometimes and it was good to actually sit down and think about it right now. Put words on the feelings, put my intent back on track.. XX cliodhna

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