The Wayfarer's Year

This photograph seems to encapsulate how I feel right now. It was taken (by the wondrous Sylvia Linsteadt who came to visit! but more of that another time) in the early autumn sun as I strode across September-coloured Dartmoor with my baby boy on my back. This has been the most treasured and difficult of all the years of my life so far. I have had to learn to be a mother whilst we totally reconfigure our life. Building our Hedgespoken home and travelling theatre has taken all the energy we could muster and then it has kept on taking. And I continue to be stretched in more than three dimensions by the challenges and alchemys and incandescent joys of motherhood. Nevertheless I seem to keep on striding, and my back continues to hold strong enough for the weight it carries.

My creative life burns clear, though its outlets are small and fleeting. I draw when my boy sleeps and gradually have managed to work enough into the (many) dark hours with a biro and my head torch to create a perpetual calendar - The Wayfarer's Year - a kind of wall frieze showing the passing seasons as a traveller's road (the year) winds through them. It is printed on recycled card and folds out to a 12-month art piece. You can buy them for £12.50 in the Hedgespoken shop here, or on etsy here. They'll be good for any year or any time of year, of course!

I have also contributed manually to our truck build - tiling the kitchen with babe on back! This home of ours is being built with great care and craft, and has come on further since this picture was taken. If you'd like to see a little video update (with us looking very tired!) and hear more truck news, do go over to the Hedgespoken blog and look.

  

This little painting is titled Incantation Under a Winter Sun - another small creative achievement in the baby-sleeping moments. It is a prize in our Hedgespoken Winter Raffle, for which tickets are available here - you could own this original painting for just £1!

The sun seems far off now, our days are mud-drenched and rain-splattered and fog-hidden. Each trip to collect water is slippery and my bones ache with tiredness. We are still not in the truck, though another year turns, and expectations and plans must be readjusted. How do you stay positive whilst the challenges of uncoupling from a former life and building a new one mount? The dream must continue to be kindled, which is hard in these damp, dark days. I can't quite believe that my baby is 10 months old (and crawling!), and that Christmas is just days away! From within the fog and the slog of this year, a bright fire still burns, and I carry its embers over the threshold into 2016, a stronger and utterly changed woman from the one I was last year-cusp, and holding in my heart and arms the most golden of all things in my life: my son.

The Hermitage 2015 Calendar

THE HERMITAGE 2015 CALENDAR IS HERE! This year, my calendar is bigger (by popular demand) - there's more room to write in the days' doings. And it contains some never-before seen paintings! As before, the old English full and dark moons (for UK & US) are marked and named (Wolf Moon, Harvest Moon, Blood Moon, Egg Moon, Flower Moon...), and the solstices, equinoxes, and quarter festivals are in there too. The whole beautiful calendrical layout has been done marvellously by Tom, and we're having them printed again at the excellent Footprint Workers' Coop in Leeds, on 100% recycled paper, and featuring a riso-printed front and back cover. I think you'll love this one even more than last year's, so I urge you to grab one whilst you still can! As you'll remember from last year, these sold out super-fast, many people missed out, and I had to do three print runs. This time, my calendar is only available (for now) as a perk in the wonderful caravan that is our Hedgespoken Campaign! Ordering one this way counts as a pre-order which we'll post out at the end of November. I may be selling some after the crowdfunder is over, but those I can't guarantee will reach you by Christmas. For only £30, you get this unique and artful calendar (postage included), and you get to support the making of our travelling dream! Roll up! Click here to claim yours now!

The Hermitage Calendar - third print run

THE HERMITAGE 2014 CALENDAR has proved popular beyond my imaginings! The first and second print runs whooshed off the shelf like the hottest of winter cakes, and still many people missed out! So this time round I'm taking preorders before making my order with the printers. Go ahead and order the calendar now, bearing in mind there'll be a delay before I can send it out to you, which is especially important to remember if you live overseas and need it for a certain date. I'll leave this listing up this week, and then make my last order with the printers. Now's your last chance folks. Thank you hugely for loving this so much, and for supporting my work. It makes such a difference.

The Hermitage 2014 Calendar

A SMILING PAGAN SUN rises on the cover of my brand new Hermitage 2014 Calendar, welcoming in twelve months of art - wonderful and strange and turning with the seasons. 

I am exceedingly proud to present to you this new creation, hot off the press!

A beautifully put together 7 inch square wall calendar printed on 100% recycled 170gsm paper by a worker's cooperative, sporting fabulous rustic riso-printed 280gsm 100% recycled brown kraft card covers featuring a newly designed woodcut-style sun and moon motif on front and back.

Inside there are twelve of my oil paintings, watercolours and clocks, chosen season-appropriately for each month. 

Each month-grid harbours close-ups from each painting.

The Solstices, Equinoxes, and Quarter Festivals as well as full and new moons are all marked for UK and USA. But best of all, the full moons are named according to the Old English tradition ~ Wolf Moon, Egg Moon, Hunter's Moon, Harvest Moon, Oak Moon etc...

 

This calendar has been thoughtfully and lovingly put together, and I have Tom Hirons to thank for the really beautiful design and layout, for which he has a far better head than I. The printing was done by the excellent Footprint Workers Coop in Leeds.

I am sure you'll agree that this is an unique and beautiful thing, which you'll want to give to all your loved ones this winter! 

The calendar will come with a small hole for hanging (not shown here as the photos were taken before hole-drilling). There is a limited supply of these calendars, so snaffle one while you can! I will also have some available on my stall at winter fairs this November, of which news soon.

I have thoroughly enjoyed creating this little almanac of art, and as we wait for November's blood moon, I hope that it will be the first in a long line of books and printed collections to come!

The Hermitage 2014 Calendar

Artworks by Rima Staines

available here

Hickory Dickory

TO BE ABLE TO MEASURE TIME ~ the passing of the days, months, seasons and years ~ by means of watching the sky, has been an obsession of ours as humans since the beginnings of agriculture. By observing celestial movements people were able to organise their work on the land and so representations of the passing of time have long been linked to the earthy concerns of ordinary folk trying to survive from their crop yield throughout the year.
Calendars produced in the middle ages often depicted personifications of the zodiac or representations of the activities undertaken by the peasants on the land. There are some beautiful examples including the well known fifteenth century Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry (above) and the months of the year depicted in the 1475 Bedford Hours (below) which is housed in the British Museum.

If you would like to read more about medieval calendars I recommend the excellent book The Art of Time by Teresa Perez-Higuera.
It is a strange thing to allocate measurement to something like time .. which I think we all experience differently. I have never been known to follow the rigours of a strictly measured regime particularly .. indeed an early school report stated ( quite truly ) that "Rima has no sense of urgency" And I still find myself in a ever-so-slightly-floating-world that skips alongside the Other One that most others seem to operate in.


Well .. the point of all this was to tell you in a tiny little voice that I have a limited edition of small desk calendars featuring 13 of my illustrations for sale here ... by no means as exquisite as the medieval examples above ... but a little idea I had for selling my work in another way, and a chance for you to buy 13 little prints all in one go!