Thursday, October 26, 2017

The Wolf Bride as a young girl....

Very remiss of me, I know, not to have shown this before.  I finished it a few weeks ago, when I was still planning on presenting an 'expanded' version of The Wolf Bride for the Denmark Brave New Works #24 festival coming up next weekend.  An exhibition/installation/set that I could tell the story within.  But, a phone call offering several weeks of real PAID work meant I had to rethink that plan and, unfortunately, pull out and put it on hold until next year...perhaps.  I did carry on for about three days thinking, "Of course I can do both," but then after lying awake for several hours in the early hours of the morning, and realising that I was no longer looking forward to doing it, and was feeling stressed and worried, and, worse, found myself thinking about what kind of artwork I could get done quickly to fill up space, I decided that I was not Superwoman, and no, I couldn't do both.  So, The Wolf Bride has been set back onto the back burner, to quietly simmer slowly away for a long, slow coalescing of flavours and aromas.  Which is probably a good thing, because time was short anyway, and I have ideas that I had already decided I would have to abandon if I was going to do the show this November, and now I can play with them again.

So here is the companion piece to "Beauty Remembers", a painting for the beginning of the story, "Wildness in my Bones".  A painting for the first song in The Wolf Bride suite.

Wildness in my Bones

I was a restless, truant child.
I was enchanted and beguiled,
By the wild world we were once part of,
For it sang like a chorus in my blood.

I didn't want to watch the world
Through glass, through a window in the wall
Not for me the life of hearth and home,
I stepped into his footprints and grew, like a wild seed sown.

And my bones are being inscribed with unfurling leaves,
Entwined with vines, becoming willow branches bending in the breeze
And I have wildness in my bones
I don't know from where it comes
But I have wildness in my bones
And everyday...it grows...

© Christina Cairns 2017
















Tuesday, October 24, 2017

And the golden eyes that see the wind...a shaggy dog story.

Just over a week ago, Beloved and I drove all the way up to the small town of York on a Saturday morning.  It's about five hours away, we left at 8am and got there about 1pm.  We went to meet this fellow, and to see if, just maybe, he might be the right 'person' (because, of course, dogs ARE people) to join our family.


It didn't take long to decide (and I suppose the thought of a ten hour round trip for nothing might have influenced us a little), and by 2pm he was in the back of our car, windows down, heading all the way back down to Denmark.

He came from Wheatbelt Rescue, and we were told that he was (apparently) a Staghound Staffy Cross, about 18 months old, and he had belonged to a family with young children and a small backyard, and they didn't expect him to get so big (told he was a 'Staffy Cross', but not what with, it seems!), and in the end they could not keep him.  His name was Rusty.

So, we have re-entered the world of 'dog-people'.  We decided that a new life/home/family deserved a new name, so now he is Fergus...and he has wriggled his big, hairy, gentle self deep into our hearts already, and we still cannot quite believe our luck in finding such a gentle, sweet natured, well-behaved (mostly!), house-trained, gorgeous hound.

He came to us unsterilised, so poor boy is now wearing the 'Cone of Shame' after a visit to the local vet, but he seems completely unfazed by it, the only problem is he forgets his head is now 3 times the size it was last week, and keeps running into furniture...and us.  But that will be gone next week, and I can't wait to take him out and introduce him to the world.  I'm willing to bet he's never seen the sea!





He matches the floor quite well!







With Daddy!


Squeezing in under my feet at the computer desk.

Mum, don't take my picture, it's humiliating wearing this thing!


Mum!!!

Is this really my forever home...really...I can stay?!!

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