SPIRITUAL ENERGY
Over the years, I’ve often been asked how I get an idea for a novel or a drawing. A novel can start with an overheard snatch of conversation that catches my attention. At the time, I probably don’t know why, but something about it tells me it’s worth exploring. Then I give it to the protagonist and go along for the ride, wanting to know who is this fictitious person? Where are they in their life? How is the past still dictating the decisions they make and how will that inform their future?
The same applies to art. Something in the visual world will speak to me so deeply that I am impelled to explore why. During the first lockdown of the pandemic, Joel and I lived in isolation on a Tuscan farm where we’d been living for several years. On our drives into the village the landscape was often shrouded in mist and I became fascinated by trees, particularly the cypress. I didn’t know why, but the pull to find out had me drawing a series of these mist-shrouded sentinels. Over time I came to realise that they were a metaphor of each of us during lockdown when the familiar still existed but was barely discernible and out of reach.
A year later, on a visit to our favourite island, I became fascinated by rocks and boulders and started rendering them pastel. Over time they started to morph, becoming almost flesh-like. It was then that I understood the reason I had been drawn to them was the need to feel grounded again.
A few months ago, Joel and I returned to London to begin our relocation here. We went from a two-acre garden surrounded by thousands of acres of Tuscan landscape, to a tiny terrace from where I can sit overlooking other people’s gardens and fantasize about what I would do if one of them was mine. At the same time, there is relief to be free of the never-ending work every garden demands. Rather gleefully I now sit on the wicker love seat and feel gratitude that the potted jasmine, climbing hydrangea and winter clematis are thriving on little more than an occasional watering.
Then, one day, as I got up to come inside, I noticed a small, dead leaf still clinging to the vine of the winter clematis. I had no idea, in that moment, why I plucked it off and put it on my drawing table. Still not knowing, I started to draw it, placing it in imagined landscapes and seascapes, under bright skies and night skies, calm waters and stormy seas.
Slowly, I came to realise that I am the leaf…although not yet dead, I am aware of death’s vicinity. And just as I plucked the leaf from its vine, so I have detached myself from Tuscany and 27 years of profound history there. How desperately we cling to life. How challenging it is to detach from the known and fling oneself out into the world. How comfortable it seems to we humans to take the easy way, to stick with what we know and call it everything.
I do not mean to imply that staying in one place lacks courage. I am well aware, and at times, envious, of those of us who have lived entire lives in the places we were born. That sense of rootedness, of belonging and continuity is precious. But we are, each of us, who we are. Unlike the clematis leaf I am not yet dead and in order to live fully I need to let go. It is one thing to remain rooted, yet another to cling.
As I continue to explore this leaf through drawing it, I am struck by its solitude, its bravery, its determination to travel on. But more than anything, I’m in awe of its spiritual energy; that even in death it spoke to me.
Soon I will be making my drawings available on my website and it pleases me to think that some of them might find a place in other people’s lives. The energy of trees, and rocks, and leaves, and each of us, lives on; never knowing when they, or we, will speak to someone in a moment of unknown need.
With love
Maggie
