Lifelines

This series was borne from my recent travels back to my homeland, England and a stay in my best friend’s homeland, Spain. 

I grew up in Birmingham with an Irish mother and English father.  In my early 20s I moved to Australia and then to New Zealand when I married.  My lifeline, my immigration history, is from Ireland to England to Australia to New Zealand. 

Part of our recent journey involved a stop in Los Angeles and from the beach at Venice my husband was attempting to determine the direction of New Zealand.  Funnily enough I knew exactly where New Zealand was because of two “lifelines” to my two sons who were at home in New Zealand.  When I checked with Google maps I was entirely accurate.  The strong connection to my sons (the lifeline) is something that is always there but in using them to locate New Zealand it became so clear how strong, and tangible, these invisible ties are.

I spent some time with my best friend, my soul sister, around Southern Spain and in the Mediterranean.  We have managed to stay connected, over the span of a planet and decades.  In swimming, we both felt the strong presence of the eternal present moment, the moment where everything that has happened in the past is still happening and everything to come is happening too.  Awareness is in this one moment only and you can take that moment, embed it, stretch it and make it eternal if you wish.  Our time in the Mediterranean is one of those moments.

When your head is underwater in the sea or the ocean it is as if you are connected to all water everywhere.  In the water any sense of distance and time is diminished.  Every time I put my head underwater in Caroline Bay in Timaru I’m connected not only with the Pacific, but the Atlantic, the Irish Sea, the North Sea and the Mediterranean, all places I have been underwater in the last few months.

When I went back to the UK after a long time away, I realised part of me was still there and is always there and its inside me waiting to be activated by the place.  I felt an indescribable happiness and peace being in Birmingham, less than a mile from my whenua – the place where I was born, as if a sigh that is held in was allowed to breathe out.

So this series of paintings, “Lifelines,” is about the invisible lines of love and connection that link people, in the moment and also across and around our planet, with the sea as the common link.  It’s also about connection to place, and understanding that people who have immigrated, which is many of us in New Zealand, have an ongoing connection to more than one place.  I don’t think we need to divide our awareness, we can just be bigger and embrace it.  Many of the pictures are based in or around water as water seems to be a very special conductor for presence and connection.

I am noticing the first blossom on trees, and flowering Camelias as we rapidly move into our new season.  At the same time you are reaping the produce from your late Summer garden on the other side of the world.  Only a breath away from the height of Summer where we were together just a moment ago and are still together.