Tatterdemalion

OVER THE YEARS OF BEING AN ARTIST, I have come to think of and describe my paintings as Waymarkers to the Otherworlds, as gateways, portals, signposts to take you through to those Other places, those worlds just beyond this one: behind, or beside or underneath our every day. There are many ways through, of course, and many different destinations, too, which all depend on the traveller and their particular way of reading the sign. 

As the signmaker, I don't usually have any idea (or control over) where my paintings take people, or what happens when they get there. But four years ago, one traveller to these otherworlds followed my painted signposts and came back with her story. 

Sylvia Linsteadt, as many of you know, is a writer of great talent, who has an incredible ability to conjure the beautiful and uncanny and barely-seen wild worlds which shiver at the periphery of our perception. Four years ago she began writing the stories of the worlds my paintings took her to, and when she sent them to me, I was blown away. Her work is lyrical and profound, folkloric and unique, and for me, these stories were so moving to read - so familiar and yet so new. We knew we had to make a book.

These past years have seen these stories grow and enmesh and they have become what we are calling a post-apocalyptic mosaic folktale. A back-to front book which began with the illustrations, a tale of wheeled and raggedy folk, of edge-dwellers and shape-shifters, itinerants and wild ones, and their imagined futures in a world after the breaking we are currently living through.

 

A perfect meeting of arts and souls, and a book born of it on this day of new beginnings. Sylvia and I met at last in the flesh last October; she came from her native Northern California (where the book is set), to visit us and stomp the tors and woods and Dartmoor's bronze age relics with us, to share our hearth and breathe these winds for a while. It was a wonderful meeting, which seemed to have happened long ago already.

 

And while she was here, our book was taken up by a publisher. Unbound is a publisher very suited to this tale: it is liminal and powered by its readers, it is back to front and supportive of the unusual. Which means that this book cannot be without you! To preorder your copy and find your way to this utterly wonderful, strange and necessary Otherworld - bejewelled and ragged, rooted and sung - click on the image below! 

Bring Tatterdemalion into the world!

Painting poems, and what happens when it goes wrong

SOMETIMES my paintings take new and unplanned directions, either because I am deliberately trying to break my own rules, or because the project calls for me to step beyond them, as in this case.

These watercolours were done as part of a collaborative project between myself and my good friend, the Scotland-based poet Em Strang. Her poems are wonderful - wild and gentle, quiet and frightening, and I was delighted with the prospect of making images to go with them. 

But here's the thing - illustrating poetry is really hard! A poem, when it really works and has power, makes its images in your imaginal realm, where they can flit and morph as such images should, just beyond the reach of gravity and the crushing weight of collapsing the wave function. Knowing this, it was very hard not to step on the toes of the poem, and to illustrate but still leave space for the unsaid.

Thus I painted outside of my usual edged style, losing myself to the chance happenings in the watercolour, trying to find the hook in each poem that caught my heart.

I ended up with strange images, some of which I really like, and some of which I'm less sure about, but all of which feel very outside my comfort zone.

Having talked it over with Em, we both agreed that these images weren't quite what the poems were asking for, though neither of us know quite what are.

I shall try again one of these days, perhaps, to track down that elusive animal in these beautiful poems, and record its pawprint in paint.

Meanwhile, I continue my learning of what it is to really illustrate words, making companion images that work alongside the poem or story, but do not duplicate it or reveal a mystery that needs to stay hidden.

For now, I have put these little paintings up for sale, along with a few other original paintings and drawings in my shop.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about these images, and about your experiences - both success and failure - of illustrating poetry.

And do sniff out the wonderful work of Em Strang, as well as on her blog, she has a few pieces of writing and poetry at the Dark Mountain site and in the books. In October she will also be running a weekend writing workshop in Cumbria with Susan Richardson ~ Writing Root & Claw.

The Scrimstone Circus Gospel

The Scrimstone Circus Gospel illustration 1 - by Rima Staines

LISTEN TO ME.

I wasn't born for birthday parties and scented candles in the twilight bath or string quartets on the lawn. I wasn't made for clean handkerchiefs and your mother's approval at the dinner table. Oh no. I was born for rock’n’roll, sea shanties and the smell of diesel on the harbour walls at dawn. I was made for bear claws on bark, for fires in the wasteland where desperate men in greasy overcoats swig vodka in the sparse snow and cold so tight and empty you can barely see a flame in it or the shape of hope in the dark. I was born for broken glass and imperfect love and riding the rusty trains home when the last-ditch grail-quest has failed and all the knights have spent their blood and wine on wrong questions asked of nobody in the three-penny hours of darkness. I was born to live wild under the hill, in the belly of the alembic, in the sperm of the whale and the heart of the gold... 

Tom Hirons - The Scrimstone Circus Gospel

____________________________________________

And so begins a strange and wonderful story written by Tom, and illustrated by me for a newly released collaborative book project published and curated by the Lazy Gramophone Press.

The book is called Time; it is a vast undertaking: three years in the making, and comprising the work of 55 different artists and writers.

The original idea, dreamed by Sam Rawlings, was to create an anthology of stories in which the passing of time was explored by intertwining narratives in an unusual and unique way. Tom was asked to write the central story which would span the life of a single protagonist - through childhood, adulthood and old age.

 

In each of the three life stages there was to be a crossing point, an event in the narrative which would become a common point in the anthology's "history". So, for example, if he'd written in a storm, this "crossing point" would get passed to all the other writers creating stories for that section of the book's timeline, and a storm would occur somehow at some stage in their tales too. The result was to be a weave of narratives which all gained a sense of truth and a "historical" pinpointing due to the shared event in all the stories. The same thing was done with each of the three life stages, with Tom's story serving as the central anchor to which all these other stories were tied. 

The devilish-vagabond-world Tom has created in his wonderful tale - The Scrimstone Circus Gospel - is dark and funny and profound and colourful and lyrical and strange, and it was delicious to illustrate. These are my drawings for the story here - I'll not explain them further, but leave you to go and read the book. Suffice to say, that drawings of things like dice games with devils, opium-fueled reveries, drunken shootings, bearded ladies playing accordions, pickpocket-ballerinas, hideous corrupt priests, shipwrecks in the rain and celestial eagles and bulls should give you a certain aroma of the spice that awaits you in the tale! In fact I suspect the whole thing has a lilting gravelly sea shanty as a soundtrack.

The Scrimstone Circus Gospel illustration 2 - by Rima Staines
(NB ~ the title on the creature's cage - a word-hybrid
between the Russian words for circus - цирк, and church - церковь )

The Scrimstone Circus Gospel illustration 3 - by Rima Staines

I'm particularly excited by this publication, because it is the first time Tom and I have had work published in a book together - my art illustrating his words. We share such a wonderful and surreal imaginary landscape in our daily conversations and foolings, that it is an honour to be asked to put pencil to paper and make visual representation of Tom's story-world for others to see. This one is certainly replete with the dark oddness we like.

The book is full to brimming with other fantastic works, poems, art and stories by many other people, there's even a fold-out timeline-map. This little video gives you a further taste of the whole collection, which you can buy here, should you be tempted... 

Вся время губит и вся покрывает

Вся тлит время и в конец превращает

Едину истину аки свое племя

Хранит блюдет и открывает время.

Time destroys and covers up all;

All is decomposed and brought to end by time.

Only truth and its offspring

Are conserved, protected and revealed by time.

[from Иѳіка ієрополітіка (1712)]

All photos of Time anthology © Lazy Gramophone Press

Small Visitations from a Winter-Dusted Equinox

A BLUE BRIGHT COLD DAWN blew in the other day. It was a surprise amid these endless fogged and drenched grey days of unspring. Chicklets under our eaves, gambolling lambs and dogged primroses are chirping out the fact of spring, their joys flitting over the Equinox and on through white-blanketed March, whilst we huddle indoors, disbelieving the daffodils and wondering what happened to the sun. 

This blue bright morning was beautiful though, and all etched in frost. Macha and I climbed the hill behind our house where you can see all across the valley of villages and out beyond onto Dartmoor. A mist crept in, silent and low, hanging between the hills and whispering over the roofs of the just-waking houses.

Frozen mornings trap beauty in a certain thrilling way. The ochres and browns of winter's trees and hedges hummed in patchworks around the shadow blues of iced fields. 

As the morning rose, the light pinked the far-off moors before it reached us.

There's a magnificent old sentinel pine tree on the hill behind our house, a homing land mark for getting lost on long rambles over the fields, and a memory-keeper for all that happens in the valleys below.

Macha and I stepped quietly through the dawning, smelling new things from the night, and looking down into the day shining crisply at our feet.

Other days have brought snows, which have dusted the toes of birches, the roofs of shacks and weighed heavy on the confused petals of spring.

 

On the rare days we have sun, it plays a game of chase with the frost across the thatched roof of our cottage, until the colder of them wins at the end of the day anyway.

There have been beautiful visitations at unexpected moments too. I encountered the swoop of a tawny owl one night as I drove home along a dark lane. It landed on a branch overhanging the road, and so I stopped and turned off the engine to watch it. It crouched there with something in its claws looking me directly in the eye. Then it flew off into the night, dropping the whateveritwas onto the road. I peered and noticed it moving. So I got out of the van and went over to find a baby rabbit, screaming, but apparently unhurt. I picked it up and took it home in my lap, where it crouched, the terrible screaming subsiding eventually. Once home, it almost met its end again after leaping from my lap and running to the darkest corner of the room where Macha leapt after it. Deciding that I wasn't going to be able to raise this little one myself, I took it outside in the dark to find a rabbit hole. It was small, and probably too young to survive alone. I don't know whether rabbits adopt young, but this one had already been flown far from its home, so I had to try. It sat still on my open palm for a while, sniffing the air. Then - hop, hop, hop - it bounced down the rabbit hole I'd found for it, and out of my story.

Another night brought a flitting-flapping floor-bound moth to the corner of my eye. It also nearly ended up as a dog-snack, but I held it for a while, its wings so light green and papery, they were almost an entirely new colour. I had a chance to remember this one with my camera before I released it to a night time of moon and owl silence.

The letterbox has also brought wonders from other shores, whilst we stay in by the fire as the winter refuses to withdraw her talons.

These beautiful hand-spun, hand-knitted sock masterpieces were knitted by Teleri Gray in Germany in return for some of my prints. I am so delighted by their intricacy and perfect fit, I almost can't bear to wear them and prematurely destroy the heels with my chicken feet! 

photo © Sylvia Linsteadt

And last but most surely not least, a wonder-tale through the mail, written by my amazingly talented word-magician friend Sylvia Linsteadt. This is part one of the Gray Fox Epistles, a fairytale-by-post project that she has created, and which you can sign up for too, at her blog. This first story is a retelling of the Celtic tale, The Children of Lir, and my goodness is it an artful and beautifully-wrought thing! Sylvia makes the land speak across centuries, and conjures a world so familiar to me, that it is all the more strange for it. 

The envelope arrived, all wrapped in wonder and the footprints of deer, and tucked inside were wild clover leaves, redwood needles and a single wild jackrabbit hair. Sylvia has magic in her quill, and I urge you all, each and every one, to sign up for her next story which will be a unique retelling of the Russian tale, Tsarevna Frog. One fine and not too distant day, our arts will share pages, but for that you shall have to wait...

The cold nights are still woodstove firelit and damp window-paned, and our days have been filled with the little plans of coming months. I have painted and drawn and begun preparing a new studio space which must be reached through a trapdoor (of that more anon), and Tom is deep in the gruelling last months of acupuncture studies. The truck awaits our dreams and hammers and nails still, as it crouches under its tarpaulin blanket until clearer skies come this way. Mythic midsummer exhibitions are in the cauldron. My ideas, as ever, tramp and stamp like a herd of snorting wild horses held at the end of a bunch of long tethers in my hand as the year marches on happily and strangely.