Krasa

KRASA ~ a name made from the Slavic roots of words for beautiful, the colour red, delight, fiery, alive, dazzling... (and which possibly ever so slightly brings to mind a certain anarcho-punk band?!). 

This is the new little trio that I'm playing in (and our business card, which I've just designed). You might find us these days on Devon street corners in red outfits busking for coins in the cold December sun. We'll be performing alongside esteemed musical comrades at the Feast of Fools, of course, but you can come and see us play for free next Thursday December 13th at the Sandy Park Inn, from 7.30pm. 

Here we are playing at a party last week... we all look rather serious and engrossed in getting the notes right, and there are people talking in the background (about accordions and morris minors and drinking too much, amongst other things!), but it gives you a taste.

These are two Klezmer tunes: Freilechs noch der Khupe & Papirossen.

Lisa Rowe is on fiddle, Tim Heming is on clarinet and bass, and that's me on accordion. Thanks to Pete Montanez for the video.

I'm still battling the excruciating performance nerves; it's a strange combination of wholeheartedly loving and wanting to play this music and simultaneously finding doing it in front of people terrifying. Strangely this is only when it's an "official" gig - I feel quite at home playing round a fire and thoroughly enjoy busking; perhaps I shall always remain a vagabond. But I forge on through the fear nonetheless, so come along to the pub and cheer us on if you're free next Thursday and live nearby.

The Alchemist

THE MOMENT of putting pencil to pristine paper begins in an artist a process that is described in myths and in alchemical texts, on spiritual paths and in psychologists' consulting rooms, on esoteric quests and in our dreams at night... 

I prefer not to plan my paintings very heavily, and my sketchbooks contain just  very rough draughtswoman's notes as to the vague placing of things within a frame. I like to save the real magic for the actual final painting. For me, the shamanic process of coaxing out entities from the page and deciding the most beautiful trajectory for a line needs to take place within the object itself, for it to become an object of power. If I drew the whole thing out in draught and then copied it to the canvas, it would be dead and remain leaden.

And for the purposes of this work, I am concerned with transforming that lead into gold. 

I always listen to music when I work; I find it takes me easily into the otherworld I need to dwell in to be able to work magically. Music is a dear and important part of my artistic life. I love to play and to listen, and I am endlessly fascinated by the shifts it causes in me: the movements in my soul. 

Some many moons ago, I was on a train listening to music on my headphones, and drawing in my sketchbook at the same time. Perhaps because I was actually hurtling along simultaneously, the conjunction of overwhelmingly moving music and creation, caused me to consider the alchemical process that is art.

It struck me that the musicians who had composed and played this music were putting the same heart into it which I put into my painting, and that consequently, I was being moved, being transformed by listening to the work of these musicians whilst drawing. I wondered at the thread of soul which goes into a work of art - be it music or writing or painting or dance or theatre or whatever - and then leaks out again upon it being experienced. It then goes into that person standing before the work of art, and actively changes them. What then comes out of that person is coloured by the particular magical thread they've taken hold of in falling under the spell of that piece of art.

Words and an idea came then, on that train, about the role of artist as alembic, where the transformation necessary for making gold happens within the artist, but also, crucially, within the artwork. This is why beautiful things created with soul matter: they set running a series of alchemical reactions inside human beings, that are vital for living a meaningful life. The creation and imbibing of these beautiful things is just as necessary to us as is the husbandry and nourishment of food.

And so I began a painting of an alchemist. This Alchemist is an artist and a young woman. She sits cross-legged in an arched palette-mandala of phoenix-fiery transformation. Around her head flies a golden nimbus of musicians, undoubtedly playing the East European folk music of my soul. From their instruments and mouths come ribbons of song, stitched with a poem, and many-coloured. This ribbon winds down through our Alchemist's dress, and becomes the coloured stripes of the fabric. In her hands she holds her own heart, which takes in and bleeds out this ribbon of song, this thread of soul, as if it is her own blood. On it flows, down her dress, through her, until it reaches the hem of her dress. There it trickles off into many paint jars to become the pigment with which she will create her magic thereafter.

The painting of this piece mapped my own personal transformations, and became for me precisely what I sought to describe in painting it. It took a long time, many months. I stopped working on it at some points, and concentrated on other, less potent works. But this one still called me, and I finally completed the work.

Underneath the Alchemist is a word in golden Cyrillic letters - Алхимичка. It means Alchemist, but I’ve feminized the ending. There isn’t really a word for a woman-alchemist, and I’m told that this word might sound rather ridiculous to Russians.

This painting rests on a pivot on which balance many spectrums... music:painting, sound:vision, red:violet, above:below, sun:moon, masculine:feminine, invisible:visible, ash:phoenix, and so on... The most obvious pivot is the place of intersection of the two circles, within which Venn-space is held the heart, the place where I feel physically these transformations taking place in me.

Last I added gold and words; soon I will frame the painting, perhaps as if it was an icon. 

I am astounded by this painting, (which is extremely unusual for me in relating with my own work) and more so by the fact that it looks nothing like I imagined it would when I thought it up back then on that train. It is a kaleidoscope of gold and jewel colours and magic and music, it has painted me, and I almost don't know how it happened.

The Alchemist
{~prints available here~}

by 

© Rima Staines 2012

This soaring song,

The musicians' brew

of heart-chord changes,

and pieces of you;

O liquorice liquor

as black as a hole,

replenish the belly

of my samovar-soul.

This artist's body:

alembic of love,

transfigures the liquor

of song from above,

And paints out the colours

of humanity's tale;

a golden translation:

What it is to be frail.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Small postscript...

• The spell-poem above is what's written in the painting in the threads of song.
• This painting (as well as my Rise & Root piece) is being published in the third Dark Mountain book, which is available for pre-order now.
• There are two sizes of archival giclée prints of The Alchemist available in my shop now, as well as other, smaller prints.

Oil paint for the ears, spring flowers for the sorrows

THERE ARE WHITE FLOWERS growing beautifully about this rusty old wheel at the front of our truck, but I haven't had a chance to go and look at them these last weeks because I have been painting. Painting at night, painting in the days, painting in the bits in between.
I am emerging gradually from underneath an elephant of exhaustion which is the result of two manic weeks of exhibition preparation. Up in that tree I knew not of the long hours of desperately focused painting that lay ahead. I have always been a last minute artist and I think really that I work well under pressure, even though I don't like it one bit. I like best to be able to set my drifty painting pace to meander around my days as they go, but when an outside deadline looms, I fear failure above all and morph into a new creature with an iron will to finish it, no matter how leaden my eyelids or how loud my inner screams.


I had two paintings to complete before the opening and both are, I think and hope, the best things I've done. And while I have painted like a thing possessed, Tui has made me the most lovely picture frames from found wood.
Along from where our house rests its wheels is a pile of moss and timber that was once a barn. The roof has caved in completely and all around nettles and brambles grow. There by the barn-that-was lie stacks of old pallets. Weathered by time and the sky, grey and holey. Perfect for a poverty stricken artist who cannot afford expensive framers. I bought cheap clip frames to provide the glass and the backing and had mounts cut. The rest was done by Tui with glue and staples and sandpaper. Here are the magnificent rustic results in progress and in all their gallery glory!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile springtime was passing me by; I sat bent over the table like my painted characters, moving my three-haired paintbrush over the neverending surface of wood.
These two latest works have music coming from them. If you lean close and listen, you'll hear strains of strange East-European melodies, for those are the musics that move me.
If you have not yet heard the exquisite harmony singing from Bulgaria, sung sometimes with the accompaniment of the goat-bagpipe, the gaida, I urge you to - there is nothing like it. I've recommended it before but A Harvest, A Shepherd, A Bride - Village Music of Bulgaria is a wonderful collection of songs which I think is how this painting would sound if you could for a moment swap your ears with your eyes and listen to it. Anyhow, the point is that the painting I worked on up in that tree studio became this below. I am very pleased with it, and I rarely say this. A new tiny paintbrush has led me to paint fine lines describing the shapes of faces and hands and feet with finely diluted oil paint. And these different-sized people fit happily into the odd shaped piece of wood, singing their Bulgarian harmonies, while the little fellow plays heartily on his gaida. I only managed to take one photo of this painting amid the recent chaos, but here it is... (that first word of the title means 'sing' or 'we sing' - unless any Bulgarian readers can tell me otherwise?)

пея : A Song To All Our Sorrows

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And next came the final piece. With just one week to go, and the most enormous piece of wood I have ever painted on in front of me, I began work on a clock to out-tick all previous clocks... With pencil in hand I spent late nights drawing a scene of Pied-Piperishness, an old bearded one-man-band with rats nestling in his beard, and children following. It took time, and the painting gradually took shape. I had read that the story of the Pied Piper was perhaps a remnant of a history of an exodus from Hamelin to collonize parts of Eastern Europe. And this combined with ideas about Jewish music (something that has always resonated old and true in me), and the ostracization of Jews through history formed an image. The pied piper in this case has become a one man band, partly because I like the idea of a character carrying all his instruments and chattels at once, and partly because I needed the roundess of drum for the clock face. The title I took from the well known W.B Yeats poem The Stolen Child that has been sung by various folk singers, and so tied in thoughts of childhood, and the taking-away that is done by music and imagination, and that is so very important, not just in childhood. Of course there is sadness there too, as there always is I think in my work.
I took photos of this one as I went which I share with you here.

So there it is, I am pleased with my work, though I became far too exhausted to be able to 'see' it properly by the end. The night before the opening of the exhibition I was still painting... and went to bed, finally putting the battery in the back of the clock, and setting it to twenty to eleven. On waking.. it still said twenty to eleven and there followed a morning of panic, re-drilling and just a little throwing of pliers. With just half an hour to spare we arrived and hung the clock in its place on the gallery wall. There it'll be for all to see, and perhaps to buy until the 10th of May. These rather nice photos of it below were taken for the Imagine Gallery website.

Come Away O Human Child From A World More Full Of Weeping
Than You Can Understand

Now I'm off to not paint for a few days and enjoy the wonderful springing springtime...

Eggs & Serpents

♥ ♥ ♥ Happy Easter friends! ♥ ♥ ♥

Two egg tales for you today ...
First a few pysanky ~ Ukrainian easter eggs, decorated beautifully using the wax resist (batik) method. The name comes from the verb pysaty ~ to write as the designs are written on with beeswax rather than painted.
So long as pysanky are decorated every year, the world will continue to turn. If, however, the custom is abandoned for any reason, evil, in the shape of a horrible serpent chained to a cliff, will overrun the world. Each year this serpent sends out his minions to investigate how many pysanky have been made.
Another old Ukrainian myth tells of giving highly decorated, intricate and dark coloured eggs to the elderly because their life is rich and full of experiences. In the same way, the young are given eggs with more white space on them for their life is a blank page.
Girls should never give their boyfriends eggs which are undecorated at either end as this can foretell baldness!
Have a look at this etsy seller who is making and selling some beautiful pysanky.





Second, the English folk belief surrounding abnormally small yolkless eggs sometimes produced by old hens. These eggs were thought to be cockerel's eggs; they were extremely unlucky and were thrown over the roof because if hatched they would produce a cockatrice ~ a legendary creature with the head and legs of a cockerel and the body and tail of a dragon or serpent. The cockatrice (often interchangeable with the basilisk) was venomous and could kill people with its deadly glance. It was often said that this creature had come from a cockerel's egg hatched out by a toad.
According to legend it could only be killed by a weasel (see picture below right) or by tricking it into seeing itself. At Saffron Walden (Essex), a knight is said to have donned crystal armour to destroy a cockatrice; and at Wherwell (Hampshire), where a man lowered a mirror of polished steel into the creature's den, it fought its reflection till exhausted.

"The Bazeliske the Serpents King I find,
Yet Weasels him do overcome in warre,
The Cyren land him breedes of Lernaes kind,
They to all other a destruction are:
And if we may beleeve, that through the heat of Sunne,
In old Cockes Egges this beast is raised first,
Or beastes by sight or smell thereof are all undone,
Then ist not good, but of his kind the worst."