cliodhna’s wave

Hare, moon magic and swift running and wide eyes and long slender limbs that dart this way and that and flash of white tail bounding over the land. Hare is magic and music and beauty. She is my latest obsession, having graduated in some way from a white fox I now paint and draw hares.

Who remembers Masquerade? Those of you in ireland and england certainly might. I remember the hare and the illustrations though I was too young when it came out to get involved in the quest.

The first image that captivated me was Albrecht Dürer. The study of a young hare. I think it was more the reality of the drawing that got me first, at an age when drawing like that seemed an impossibility to me and now that I see it after many years it seems less somehow, like I imbued it with a magical presence and untouchability when I was young and that impression stayed with me. It is still beautiful and it is a quiet hare that he drew.

My own image of a hare. This is quite large, around 3×4 feet and I like it. It is still sitting in my work room waiting for the sides to be painted and for me to sign it.

a beautiful soft hare sculpture that caught me on etsy by dragonhouseofyuen

a nice image by ElleJW

and lastly, cause my two dogs like nothing better than a charge across the countryside after hares they have not a chance in hell of catching this doggy collar! by fairytailcollars

I have painted many women with stars over the years. This one is the painting I described here. She stands proud upon the earth but still she has her connection to the stars.

I have started painting on large paper. Good watercolour paper and masking taping the edges so when the painting is finished I still have those wonderful edges. easier to transport too.

Zopilotes is spanish for Vulture and these guys are turkey vultures who live in the mountains of chihuahua. I was getting the train back from Chihuahua city (awesome train ride, goes through what is called the Barrancas del Cobre. In parts deeper and wider than the grand canyon in america) and just got a glimpse as we passed of all these vultures dining on a (very) dead cow. The image stuck with me and became this painting.
These birds are incredibly common here. You can see six or seven of them at a time hovering in a circle over some distant valley. I wonder do they have a special ’somethings going to die’ sense.

and check out my sisters new blog/online portfolio Grainne Quinlan. She is currently looking for a job in an animation studio so if anyone has any ideas. She worked on El Tigre, a super cool cartoon set in Mexico city. In one episode they are being attacked by evil guacamole and the arch villaness is an electric guitar playing skeleton called Katana

Also while I am at it the company here in mexico is looking for an Autocad drawer (must be good, with experience) to draw the ramps and drifts under the ground. Pay is good and no expenses! Anyone know anyone?

First a picture I have finished about here. The frogs that come out of nowhere when the rain arrives.

and  as I said in my last post I took some photos of where I work a few days a week. I do translation and basic administration for supposedly three days a week but actually more like four and last week was five.

Its a mad place. I never thought I would end up doing secretarial work but there is a part of me that just adores organising things. Its a gold and silver mine in the mountains in Chihuahua. There is an open pit and the people I work for do underground mining. The first time Paul took me underground in the mine in Guanajuato I was scared, for about an hour, and then I was fine one tunnel pretty much looks like every other tunnel to me and I had imagined big crystal caves and strange rocks. He did point out some brown dirt and said that it was almost pure gold.

There is a place here in chihuahua where you can go really deep underground into huge crystal caves. So deep you need to bring oxygen with you to breathe.

Huge machinery abounds here. Sometimes I reckon its an excuse for men to play with really big toys and nothing to do with the actual mining.

The portal of the underground mine. They will connect soon with old workings that were abandoned years and years ago.

The roads into here are tight, extrmely steep in places, curvy, muddy, slippy, dangerous and I don{t know how they manage to bring the huge machinery in on them. Some machinery is so big they have a tractor behind the truck pushing it! It takes them three days sometimes to travel what takes us three hours in a jeep. They camp out along the way and go extremly slllooooooowwly.

We were driving home one night and saw this guy standing by the side of the road. Cominvi is the contract company we work with. We have no idea who put the hat and safety vest on him. There are so many donkeys on the roads here, with a wonderfully zen attitude to life. They fall asleep where ever. Paul came across one in the middle of the road asleep, he drove really close to it, no movement, he honked his horn, not a blink of the eye, he inched very slowly up to it and nudged it with the bumper of his pick-up. Not an inch did this guy move until finally he ambled ever so peacefully off to the side of the road. Amazing attitude to life wha!

Amazing cloud formations this time of year, I just keep taking photos of them.

And on the way to the mine in the morning

and on the way home that night looking back over to the mine

Its all blue skies here at the moment although supposedly there is a storm on the way from the ocean. Have to see what it brings with it!

On the drive through dirt roads and tall mountains covered in trees I saw a log on the side of the road which looked like a big bird. You know the way that happens. I got a feeling of a huge bird under the mountains, asleep, or singing softly. And me standing on top of the world (which is kind of what its like driving through these mountains in chihuahua). This is what emerged, the bird I saw was much darker, it being dusk and all. The green things in the ground are seeds waiting to become and the bird on the sky is waiting for the girl to walk to the sun.

this picture is about the judge that lives in us. I find him very strong sometimes. The guilt that tells us we have done a bad thing, the voice that says we shouldn’t have fun, should be more successful, more happy, more creative, more talented, more whatever. It is also the voice which judges other people too. We judge outside of ourselves so we don’t have to face our own perceived shortcomings. The judge in the picture is not touching the ground because he is not connected with the earth but lives entirely in the mind.
There is healing going on here too though, my higher self sees the judge giving out to the small child and is sending healing energy.
Down with the judge! We are all perfect just the way we are…

The next picture is tears. I find I go straight to tears whenI am doing emotional work. Part of it is buried anxiety or hidden fears or old sadnesses that I haven’t faced and which have built up and part of it is fear of letting go, the mind wants to hang onto to its control as long as it possibly can. I have actually gotten quite accepting of crying in front of people and very accepting of other people crying. I am happy to sit and be a witness, give support and just let them go through their process.

I am sitting in my parents house in Ireland writing this and it is beautiful outside. A perfect irish summer day. Sunny, calm, birds singing. I am going to have breakfast and then go for a walk in the mountains.

x clio

I had a dream years and years ago and I was sitting beside a canyon looking at an old leatherbound book which had the words “Where dragons be and how to find them” written on the front cover. I was looking at the index page because of course I wanted to know how to find them when up the canyon a huge bird came soaring. It dissolved into a thousand pixelly parts and then reformed facing towards me and took off past me with such power. I was left sitting there with my mouth open but no-one else saw it in the dream. I never did find out how to find dragons, guess I wasn’t supposed to know that information at that time.

I have changed a lot since that time. I lived in my dreams back then, It was quite cool for a while, I could dream on order and I had all sorts of mad strange lessons and journeys and I think looking back I was learning a lot on a level I didn’t know about. Time came though when I realized I wasn’t capable of holding down a proper job or manifesting all these dreams I had into reality. I was so afraid of failing (or succeeding) or making mistakes or not being able to live up to my own dreams and my knowledge about myself that I was stuck in this world and so I made the decision to come out, to quit obsessing about my inner world and start manifesting in my outer one.

The thing I know about myself is that I always get what I ask for.. always.. and this is not from an ego point of view, it amazes me sometimes when I look back and remember ‘Oh yeah, I asked for this, cool, thanks universe’. Of course this cuts both ways, I remember being frustrated with myself that I wasn’t in touch with my negative emotions, I was living on the surface all the time. Boy oh boy did I have a doozer of a year and a half after that wish but I came out the other side wiser and more in touch with myself and more accepting of my negativity and smarting from a few painful lessons.

So to come to place I think of as the Jonathon Livingston Seagull place. To learn how to ‘not ask’ but to stand so still you can traverse time and space. To learn how to be in that precious space of peace where creativity flows without hindrance, without judgement or comparison or fear or dissaproval. To leave ‘trying’ behind and just be. To let myself do that with my art and my pictures but also my life. Let it flow to where it needs to go so always I am in the right place , and the right place is always here.

I feel right now I am on the beginning of a cycle, cool feeling, I am planning work, wanting to get down to it. more oil pictures, these pictures I’m doing for threadless will get turned into embroideries. Patience, plant some seeds and see what sprouts. I said to someone recently my lesson is slow development and patience with myself is something I have had to learn. Let things develop slowly, don’t rush, don’t push, I will get to where I want to go to eventually with my stuff well learnt and well prepared, with calmness and in heart.

I am settling with Paul also, wonderful feeling of deepness that I always just accepted I would probably never find and of course scared the shit out of me when it arrived . Just to make ya’ll jealous here is a picture of the swimming hole we were in recently and I was swimming in a looking around at where I had found myself in my life saying “Cool! thanks universe”

born from the old the new comes flying forth, a rabbit leaps upwards in green growing plants, seeds yet to be germinated wait for their time to take nutrients from the earth and burst forth into life.

x spring time!

its tuesday.. reminds me of Popeyes friend.. can’t remember his name.. “i’ll gladly pay you tuesday” hey that would be a good slogan for a t-shirt. I am a bit obsessed with slogans for T-shirts at the mo.. heres one I made up

I don’t give a fork about spooning

and another

I am really a child-eating reptilian bent on galactic domination (david ike inspired that one)

The first one is getting a better response, though I would definitely wear the second one. Threadless is my new toy until I find another.

I have been messing with oil paints and changed my way of painting with them. I think I have actually gone backwards a little to when I first started painting with oils and I was messy and used the paint straight onto the canvas with swirls and lines and patterns. I got more refined in the meantime and was using layers and small brushes and the proper proportion of oil to spirits and all that and now I have come full circle back to straight from the tube onto the surface. So much fun! Here is a painting I did recently. Paul asked me to do one with lots of hands and it was easter to the two combined in my head to a spring growing picture

What else, I got some more funky mexican oil cloth and am starting to make some wee change purses with it. I have for sale on my etsy shop. 8 dollars each which is approx 5 euro. I was very pleased with myself though, I have finally conquered the dreaded zip insertion, its actually very simple, if anyone wants to know I could post about it, with pictures. I have been putting this off for years! always using some other way of closing my bags but now!!! aha! took me two tries.. you should see the first purse I made. It works but the seams are all over the place. here is the front of one of them. I love this fabric.

Ok, I have a list of things I want to accomplish today. I am going to buy knitting needles and some more zips, paint a picture, make two more purses, do some more photoshop work on a design, learn to scuba dive (I wish) and …….

x clio

Crow makes a wish and brings it to the sea.
It is a wish for companionship or for knowledge, he can’t quite decide.
But it is a definite wish for something
and so he takes a piece of sky, he takes a piece of the skies love for the sea,
and he drops it into the waves.
The sea swallows it in a rustle of sand and his wish is gone.
He waits by the shore hoping in his heart for a friend
and in his mind for the answers to the questions he asks himself constantly

This was a story I wrote a few years ago, its doesn’t really go anywhere but I still like it. There is more to come. Blue baby arrives and grows wings but I think I will let it tell itself instead of trying to guess where its going. I am having fun painting them.

I found a blog I thought I had lost its called the Mud Girls Blog and it is a collective of women who build cob houses and straw bale houses and I was enchanted at the pictures of the sweetest house I have ever seen

check it out!

This is the inside and there are more photos on the blog. Its beautiful, round corners and little hidden things. It is a gnome house, (do you ever notice the way some people are gnomes or elves or something but just don’t come from the same place the rest of us do? I know a woman in Galway and she has come straight out of the limestone of the burren).

Their home site is here if you want to read about cob building and ovens.

Now for something on the other end of the spectrum but still in harmony with our environment and still beautiful have a look at this building

It cleans the air and its wonderful to look at. Read the post about it. Its a cool site, called the Green Geek