painting everywhere on everything, hares, witches and community, the portal of adolescence, and dogs
🌞Happy June AND July! 🌞
Without warning the newsletter did not come out last month. The end of the month of June crept forward and silently slipped past me, and I shrugged and whispered ‘bumper edition’ to myself. It wasn’t that June was uneventful, not in the least. In fact it was the opposite that prevented me from putting my experience of June into any kind of coherent structure. August will mark a year since I started the newsletter, and I think I will change the monthly format to something more flexible, to better accommodate the way that I work and process.
June involved a lot of travelling! In the first weekend myself and Aeva went out to Sweden to visit his brother and his family - spring was a couple weeks behind Berlin and the lilac was still in full bloom. I made a lot of mental notes about what was growing there (I found WORMWOOD! Big brother of mugwort and famous ingredient in Absinthe). On a 10k run out of the little town, we came across a church and several old stones with rune carvings which made me very happy. We stopped on a bench just near the stones and talked about the future (which felt fitting somehow).
This is something I love about running. You can do it almost anywhere, and often, like in this case, you can find somewhere new and be surprised and inspired by what you find. It can feel that you’ve arrived there quite deliberately, in that moment in time.
While at home in Berlin, I see a lot of rabbits in the park nearby, and in Sweden I saw a lot of hares. They are so much bigger than rabbits and definitely command the space in a different way…and also seem much less afraid. I was very inspired by the mysterious hares I saw while out and about in Swedish suburbia and made an illustration that I was really love, and therefore have not yet sacrificed to the instagram algorithm, so I’ll share it here. I will also note that I now understand why it is often hares and not rabbits favoured in folklore and stories about witches.
The beginning of June was for sure rabbit/hare heavy and as I went running later in the evenings during the hot days, I saw more and more of the rabbit folk hustling in the half light of dusk. I find them both funny and mildly ominous, the way they sit chewing in groups, their bodies so still on my approach.
I’ve been thinking about animals in general quite a lot. I never had a pet growing up, but I feel there is a lot about animals that scientists are only now discovering; things that most people knew and felt instinctively about animals as children, and that is that they are very alive, very sentient beings that share our reality and our world. As mysterious as it is to imagine their point of view, it’s undeniable that the presence of animals is part of the human experience, and we owe them our respect and care.
In my journey the past two years getting to know plants, this is something I had to learn. Plants are alive. They notice. Plants have different properties, characters or energies if you will, and that’s something to take note of if you’re a botanist or biologist, a chef or a gardener. The same goes for animals. It feels like a process of noticing. It’s hard to put into words, because this process is non verbal, and animals and plants don’t speak like we do. I think everyone can understand this in their own way if they wanted to.
At the beginning of July, I started reading the famous trilogy by Phillip Pullman, ‘His Dark Materials’, the first book of which was made into a (kind of bad) film about a decade ago. I was gifted the most beautiful editions of the books as a teen but never read them, and I think my recent thoughts on the human connection with animals has been greatly informed by these stories. The protagonist is Lyra, a young girl living in a world in which a persons soul is not inside the body, as it is considered to be for us, but outside the body in the form of an animal, always at your side. The animal form of the soul can change and is always in flux, until the person reaches puberty, and at this point the form of the soul becomes fixed forever. The books have been super inspiring, and actually, as I’m now on the final book, I’m realising there are lots of correlations with my own fantasy story Antherda. The idea of parallel worlds is a particular big theme. I’ve been enjoying reading the story with a young girl as the central point of the narrative, and that her complex relationships with her parents are woven into layers of metaphor in a coming of age style.
The constant question about the mystery around adolescence is so present and so interesting! It’s universal that every child has to grown up, to change, to enter through a portal into an unfamiliar world. I think we repeat this cycle many times even as an adult, moving through portals big and small as things change, we change, the world changes. I think about this a lot.
June and July have brought lots of opportunities to paint! On walls and surfaces inside and out. Myself and my esteemed peer and friend Melody have been working together on murals these past weeks. Melody has a great eye for colour and design and shape, while I specialise in detail and line work, which has proven to make us a great team and able to work in different styles. Painting large spaces is hard work but it’s really special to paint these murals in spaces where they’ll be seen and hopefully loved!
The mural pictured last was painted on site at a festival build in the countryside, where we stayed for a couple nights while we painted. The site is being worked on still to prepare for the first festival, which opens 28.07, and people have been building and putting all kinds of things together to make the space magical. It was great to be a part of that process, as someone who has worked many festivals (selling veggie food!) it was kind of familiar to be part of a small crew all working towards the same goal. The weekend we were painting was HOT and thankfully there was a big lake nearby that we could swim in on the day we finished the mural. The routine of the day felt good, the regular group mealtimes really broke up the day and meant I had a great level of energy for the whole duration! Getting a break from the city and having a routine for a couple days did a lot of good! I also got to see a lot of dogs, and this has sparked more conversations with aeva about wether or not we could bring a dog home some day soon 🐶 (until we have the space it’s not possible 🥴)
Just before this trip to the countryside, I made this comic which I think was reflecting my feelings on city life in that moment quite accurately:
Also, big news, I will be starting a new job at the end of August! It’s part time teaching comics to school kids as part of a kind of after school thing. It’s regular work and although I know comics and have years and years experience working with kids, the marrying of the two will be something quite new for me! I’m curious to see how it all unfolds, as I’ll be in training for the first few weeks.
I was recommend a podcast series called ‘Witch’ from the BBC recently which I devoured within a couple of days, and among many other things, it got me thinking about community. The series included interviews with all kinds of people, but one thing that they had in common was that the word witch connected them with something empowering, within themselves but also with others and with the natural world.
Community in this modern day in the western world, is something that requires hard work and perseverance to carve out. The way we have evolved is catered on a biological level to the forming of strong social bonds and community. What with pride month and pride weekend in Berlin having just gone by, it’s got me thinking about the importance of establishing community, and especially community that reflects who you are, your needs and your values. I don’t mean just in the echo chamber way, I mean in the way that community can create a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, and space for discussion from a place of curiosity and openness.
On listening to this podcast series, it got me thinking too about how separate the younger and older generations outside of immediate blood relatives can be. There is so much that has changed these last 10 years, let alone 20 or 50, and it makes me so sad to think that there are people out there with so much to give and offer, or so much in need of guidance or perspective, that could gain a lot from the kind of community that welcomes and celebrates all ages. Having lost a lot of grandparents these last few years has definitely got me thinking on this more, and I’m lucky as it is to have grown up with them all there for me like they have been. As a side note from this, I’d like to add that while I lost a grandad, an Opi and a Nan, I did also gain a grandma Eva through my partner, and I’d like to give her a shout out here because I was invited to her 90th birthday celebrations in June, and it was an honour to be there and see just how many peoples lives she has touched. It was inspiring to see, and made me hope that I would still have so many friends and loved ones around me should I make it to 90 years old!
Below are some more moments in photos from the past two months.
The summer is proving to be nothing like what I expected (what was I expecting again?!) and I am constantly working to move myself forward forward forward! I will leave you with my song of the summer, from an album I really love, and wish you the best of these summer days wherever you are! Until next time when I will be sharing updates on ANTHERDA PART TWOOOOOOO 🦌🌿🧙♀️💫
https://spotify.link/Sz6w5Lu9NBb
🖤🤍🖤🤍 Thanks for reading and until next time for the 1 year anniversary edition! 🤍🖤🤍🖤