A Little Child Shall Lead Them
Kate left this post to be published after her death.
“……and a little child shall lead them….” (Isaiah 11:6)
The painting on the left has become my icon, a personal reflection of inner movement as I struggle with a search for meaning. Lost in a wilderness. As a fledging eaglet, in 2001, I blindly launched myself from the familiarity of a thirty year marriage, into mid-air. This canvas became my backbone, a changing landscape which demanded I be an alchemist: bringing forth an inner vision on an earthly plain. I have not yet succeeded, but here I draw line. The painting is not rewarded by praise, only by challenge and engagement. Even that has the complication of language and interpretation.
After moving with the icon from rented accommodation to the first home I ever owned, the two flying eagles lost their dominance, the eggs cracked open to reveal three little eaglets. Sometime after this, whilst working with a group of adult survivors of childhood rape and abuse, it was noted that what I painted as the Tree of Life was seen to be the back of a child’s head. How was I going to survive in the wilderness with eaglets and a small child? Even a little Mouse, a survivor’s important child part, lived on the painting, not too far from the hungry eaglets – predator versus prey.
Out of this grew a huge figure, that you see now. She no longer stands naked. Her Celtic beliefs of availability, vulnerability and acceptance are integrated within her. She, who is I, accept that my death will be shortly here. I see the after life through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13).
Love to you all.
14 February 1949 – 17 January 2010.
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