My Serinity

by admin | Oct 30, 2023

online exhibitions

my serenity

Welcome to Turquoise Dreams: My Serenity Opening Night! Friday, 16th October at 7:30PM

Here at Magical Women, many of us are supported by allies and In solidarity artists and we are absolutely mesmerised by the poem, our In Solidarity poet, Richard Downes offered to us until the doors open to take us to the Art of our Magical Women, of Neurodivergent female artists.

In Richard’s words:

I’m not sure if it was all a dream. It’s late after all but I thought i saw the title of the next exhibition somewhere so i proffer…

My Serenity

My serenity

Paper and Pen

My own mother

A tall mountain

The marks I make

Upon her ream

Ink is flowing

Into still tarns

Deep still waters

Holding silence

White sunlit snow

Folds of A4

Like sheep grazing

Ruminating

On lines that stand

Like battered fences

Where earth meets cloud

To dampen soul

The pleasure comes

When work is done

I perceive a Magic Women title and I offer up my song with gladness. The second verse; a magic potion taken from the apothecary of pharmacist Townes Van Zandt. Our Mother the Mountain, an album full of old death that helps me travel on a different plane.

Turquoise Dreams: My Serenity

It’s really important you understand who is running Magical Women – Neurodivergent women, this means: Autistic, ADHD, Dyslexic and Dyspraxic.

This means: spelling mistakes, ND language, ND mix ups and ND expression. We won’t always get things right, we won’t live up to your expectations of the Neurotypical Mainstream Arts world, but we also simply don’t have the money or funding to cover our costs for that. We are run on a small Arts Council Grant and tons of passion. If you notice things that are wrong, we hope you can enjoy the art. This isn’t an excuse but an explanation of our barriers. Magical Women exists to fight against systemic ableism and make visible the true cost of Access for us to platform Neurodivergent women artists in the arts.

We hope you will enjoy our evocative, immersive and beautiful exhibition.

Our Catalogue on sale for £5.00

Buy Here

What evokes a sense of serenity in you when you create art?

What do you want to leave for the viewer to meditate on?

Magical Women have selected pieces of art that possess the power of turquoise in its midst. We hope that this exhibition brings to light what turquoise in its myriad of hues perpetually inspires.

Becky Atherton – Ascend

“Open
we expand
our wings
ready for flight
we soar
over lands and seas
we are filled with oceans
we carry the world in our eyes. ”

“We are impulsive
And speak from the heart
We hold wisdom
In the palm of our hand.”

Emma Reavey

Judith Rowlands

“And often people, passer bys don’t know
what to do with this wisdom
this abundance of seeing
feeling thinking seeking
the all-seeing”

“they call us intense, they run off scared
it’s hard to see the fear in their eyes
hear the anger off their lips
and know what to say or do – ”

Sarah Gray

“so perhaps we mask
or make up
hide
behind veils
stories
store ourselves in glass boxes
unsure what to reveal
unsure what to say, we lose passion sometimes
for our art-creating feels hard…”

Philippa Bandurek Bradbury – My Stimmy Feet with tan lines (Acrylic paint on 240gsm canvas textured sheet, approx 27x36cm.

“Because to be open is to be
a Magical Women artist
one who glimmers
who is the seeker of light
who is filled always with it
but requires more
even when it is becoming too
difficult to contain it.”

Anna Dyson

“Yet, if we pay attention to the meaning
in the Neurodivergent’s art
and heart
you’ll truly look into the abyss
the void
and hear it speaking back
through song
light
colour”

Becky Atherton – Escape

“through colour
splashes
and stims
and movement
flight
sight
the moon
the light
the sky at night.”

“And our eyes will open again,
our lashes
curling and the
shimmering
light
light on skin
our second skin;
on scales
on feathers
an alien being
a different tongue
we open ourselves
up to be
just
who we are:”

Wendy Young

Judith Rowlands

“For we might
be at the seashore
gathering stardust
in our pockets
looking at the gaping hole
of caves
and being;
in the act of
breathing
in sea salt air

We might be, daring to exist ”

“and listening and longing
and feeling out for our home
our shell
reciting all of our stories
from our youth.”

Philippa Bandurek Bradbury – Sheldon in Red (Fineliner pen on approx 15x15cm white paper)

Frances Ann Norton – Sleeping Girl Angels over Asgaardstrand

“Awakening up to our childhood
dreams
no longer fastened to a life
that scars us
but one that brightens all the corners of our
rooms ”

Elinor Rowlands – Opening from the core

“We feel the magic
We bask in it
Golden rays of sunshine
starlight
warming to our song again
we create, we paint, we make

It flows free from us like shooting stars,
rain, waterfalls, gushing,

pouring out of ourselves”

“A grand revealing
A gentle unfurling
An opening”

Anna Dyson – My Opening

Elinor Rowlands – All the words all the worlds passing me by

“And once cracked
you’ll see
the abundance within
here, within us.”

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Emma Reavey

Stacey Hemes

Stacey Hemes

“It is shimmering out
an artistic expression

A calling for more light.”

Wendy Young – My Opening

Nicola Willis

In our workshops

we discovered to be open is not as scary

as the world’s systems and structures

make us feel being open is to be.

Being open means being

self-aware

and being powerful

there is a power in being together

together with senses

together with art materials

and creations and creating

and attending to

being open with curiosity

and being open to feel

and the heightened feelings we do feel

can sometimes feel like punishment

like a “why me?”

as it stops us from accessing

spaces

systems

structures

and sometimes even life..

but who is to say that that life is the light

we seek?

the light that we keep,

and feel and breathe in daily

and when in communion

making, creating, glowing brighter,

this seeking need not …. – (breathe)

our seeking

need not stop there.

For, the seeking is in the listening and tuning in

the power of our openness.

Tuning into this higher power

we feel together in workshops.

Thank you, for sharing it with us.

Curated by Elinor Rowlands for Magical Women

Words by Elinor Rowlands

Art by

Becky Atherton

Emma Reavey

Judith Rowlands

Sarah Bailey

Philippa Bandurek Bradbury

Frances Ann Norton

Stacey Hemes

Nicola Willis

Anna Dyson

Wendy Young

Elinor Rowlands

Thank you for attending our online Exhibition, My Opening, 2020

Our ally Richard Downes writes a poem in response to My Opening for World Disability Day

Magic; My Opening

It was a terrible thing not to be able to speak. A terrible thing to have my heArt go unheard. I found myself in a world that showed it didn’t want me. Turned away I turned away. I closed down to look at last for other openings. Many openings led to close downs. Close downs led to openings. The best to hope for to stay open a little longer each time.

My Opening

My opening, my first sentence
The words came out furious
Jumbled, forceful, erratic

Spoken to no sympathy
Except in forms not wanted
From bullies and oppressors

My opening, my first sentence
Began my rightful struggle
To articulate my love

My love dispersed unwanted
Cast like seed to rocky ground
I am become the hunch back

My opening, my first sentence
A fight to be heard without
Doubtful silence lurks within

Hatred will not hear my love
My light turns now to darkness
My opening, my first close down

3rd December 2020
The International Day of Disabled People

Artists

Blair Iris

Gemma Abbott

Liz Coolen

Aimee Grant

Judith Rowlands

Wendy Young

Emma Reavey

Anna Dyson

Jacki Cairns

Elinor Rowlands

Invited Poets

Gemma Abbott

Michelle Baharier

Invited In Solidarity Poets

Richard Downes

Zen Jones

Festival For Imbolc: Natasha Oliver-Cork

by admin | Oct 27, 2023

events

Festival For Imbolc: Natasha Oliver-Cork

Listen to Natasha, In Conversation here on Spotify.

Words about Natasha

“Natasha Oliver-Cork is an actor-musician and writer who is currently in her second year studying Acting at Drama Studio London.

From Bath, Somerset, Natasha grew up around theatre and countryside where she would daydream for hours on end and create stories and characters.

Music played a large part in her artistic development due to her inability to stop singing and turning everything into a musical – quoted from her GCSE English teacher!

So, it is unsurprising she has found herself back to writing music after her discovery of poetry writing and partaking in Magical Women’s Neurodivergent Writing Workshops back in July 2020.

Only recently diagnosed with ADHD, Dyslexia and Dyspraxia in 2020, her art is about developing an understanding of her neurodiversity and rediscovering her authentic voice and what it means to her and for her perspective of the world around her.

Magical Women has been a fundamental part of her growth in confidence in her music and her art, which she is excited to share with you through their Imbolc Festival.”

— NATASHA OLIVER-CORK

LISTEN TO Seed by Natasha Oliver-Cork for Magical Women

Join us for Imbolc in Song!

We invite you to listen to a podcast of 5 songs (also heard in the podcast above) on a Music Only podcast with short commentaries about each song by Magical Women relating Natasha’s nourishing and nurturing songs to Imbolc’s important teachings and rituals.

Song Titles in order

Seed

Release Me

Impossible

No Net

Trepidation

You have been tuning into Natasha Oliver – Cork!

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST

Festival For Imbolc: Clarissa Wright

by admin | Oct 27, 2023

events

Festival For Imbolc: Clarissa Wright

Online Event

Words about Clarissa’s work by Magical Women

Clarissa’s artworks and writings are inspired by the natural world as well as her intellect that has been weaved by her scientific works. She feels the shifting of the seasons keenly and makes creative observance in her practice. Here for Imbolc, she shares a poem ‘E-company’ that reflects on isolation and our dependence on technology – something many can relate to today, during national lockdowns imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. To illustrate the concept, she shares a photograph she has taken in the wild and journeys us into her textured ideas and fascinating insights from a ND led mind and tongue.

The tension between home and the natural environment is strong at this marker of the year. It is the time to ask for the blessings of Brigid, for the things we will nurture outside but also for the people that we nurture in our homes. At this time when we remain largely behind the thresholds of our houses, taking a moment to check in with our connections to place and to each other is an essential part of the cycle of growth we invest in throughout the turning of the year.

E-company

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Images in your head squat against your skull

As you lay in bed, embracing your laptop

Cold electronics lay here to give you company

And speak with you like you’re somebody

Spark a conversation with your screen

Ask it about your lunch, or your dream

Let it delightfully distract, and entertain

Cleverly disguise the lurking disdain.

Awaken now, the phone has remembered

To alarm! And ring at 8am as required.

Unwrap from your warm embrace

With your lover made of wire and steel.

Disenchant yourself for a moment

So that ye can feel the blood in your veins

As you rise out of your slumber into the shower

And sacrifice this moment to the falling rains.

Walk into the kitchen and you ARE alone

But not until you turn on the radio-o

Murmuring mumbles and talk-talk-talk

Delude you to think that you are not-not-not…

Ah, look and see

Your phone, laptop, screen

Acts like your best friend

How many hours do you spend

In E – company?

Who spends with you more time

In your intimacy?

Has connection been confused with electricity?

About the Artist

Clarissa Wright, Editor-in-Chief of NatureVolve magazine, is a creative writer and artist with a background studying geology at BSc and MSc level at University of Aberdeen and University of Birmingham. She creates poems, stories and visual artwork inspired by the workings of nature and the human psyche.

Her artworks and writings are inspired by her curiosity and knowledge about the natural world, grounded with her geoscience studies and experience in scientific publishing. In addition to being an artist, photographer, digital designer, photographer and creative writer, she is a freelance science journalist and editor. Her deepest interests are in philosophy, psychology and the natural world.

Festival For Imbolc: Maddie Millett

by admin | Oct 27, 2023

events

Festival For Imbolc: Maddie Millett

Join us for a wonderful Guided Walk through words and photographs with Maddie Millett on Thursday 25th February 2021.

A few words from Magical Women about Maddie and her work for Imbolc Festival

Maddie is an artist with a keen sense of the seasons and of her local environment and this is clearly evident in her work. Her practice encompasses walking, writing, clay work, sculpture ritual and incantation. She set these things in relation to one another in travelling live installations that invoke powerful feminine energy and enrich our own connection as viewer with the earth.

For Imbolc, we meet some of the ancient goddesses that she embodies in clay and we walk with her and with them as she explores her home patch at this delicate turning of the calendar. She blazes with the intensity of the coming light and through the journey we take together we watch her transform into the iconographic being she is searching for, stepping into that power in her own right, and perhaps encouraging us to do the same.

“Keep your love for nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more”

VINCENT VAN GOGH

“Rediscovering my creativity

after a long break was like drinking

from a deep well,

and I was thirsty for more.”

I remembered my love of clay,

a passion that is with me still.

After the sometimes torturous process of academia

while completing my sculpture degree

I struggled to find my way back to the bones

of what my art is to me

and to become more real and clear to myself.

My practice now involves a lot of being;

walking in woods

or the peaceful sanctum of the cemetery,

lying in the long grass or exploring forgotten paths

and allowing it all to feed into what I make.

I am seeing the worth of my previous

nascent ideas and realising I was on the right track,

but I didn’t have the right support

or faith in myself back then

I’m fascinated with and curious about ancient clay artefacts,

connection in nature,

myths, stories and rituals

(which often make more sense to me

than the shrill cacophany of the ‘real’ world).

Problems fade into the distance

as I step out into nature

and my refined senses absorb so much,

my attention no longer scattered but honed in

on the tiny movements of birds.

The delicate colours of the sky

move my deeply emotional soul

and the traipsing ivy

becomes an enchanted bower

in my limitless imagination.

I am able to express myself fully and convey my true intentions in my art.

My images and clay forms speak for me

without the spoken words that are so often

misinterpreted or misunderstood.

Our Lady of the Green Heart by Maddie

My art is me, and sets me free.

About Maddie

Maddie Millet is an artist who uses raw, sustainable and found materials in her clay and installation work. Having recently moved house to a home on the edge of the town but surrounded by fields and trees, Maddie engages with the natural world around her by going on walks and sharing her wanderings with us. Through photography weaved in with her own words, her clay goddesses, and other inspirations from poets’ pens and ancient tongues, we discover the fiery light that burns brightly all around and from within her.

Guestbook in response to the Artist’s Work

Here is feedback left by visitors to Maddie’s Guided Walk.

Thank you so much for this beautiful exploration of the creative process, especially the ways in which walking and the natural world both soothe and inspire. I particularly loved Maddie’s use of clay and all the meaning that it holds. Thank you!

Bee, Folkestone, UK

Beautiful, absolutely loved it. Thank you so much Maddie. Xx

Lorraine, Dudley, West Midlands, UK

I love Maddie’s guided walk and her beautiful photographs. I’ve been a Facebook friend for a long time.

Vanessa, Western Australia

Hi Maddie, just what was needed to ponder on and delight in – As a friend of yours, Maddie, I am loving the creativity that you are scooping from your depths. Thanks for your inspiration and sharing the coming of Spring through your reading, clay goddesses, meanderings and photos xx

Kait, North Wales, UK

Hi Maddie, loved your pictures of marigold, holly, ivy. Your sculptures look tactile. I too love graveyards. Your video is a good explanation of things i am not familiar with like ‘Imbolc’. I am just getting to know about pagan history. Thanks for a good inlet. Xx

Wendy, London, UK

Festival For Imbolc: Ashley Ferrari

by admin | Oct 27, 2023

events

Festival For Imbolc: Ashley Ferrari

Online event

A few words from Magical Women about Ashley’s work

The playfulness, movement and relation to light in Ashley’s work are a perfect celebration of the Imbolc spirit, reflecting the movement and light we start to see playfully teasing itself into the early spring days.

And Imbolc is the perfect time of year to check in with our inner child, reflecting on the things that might need addressing in order to cherish them moving forward, to talk with them of long held dreams and set firm intentions for growth.

Ashley’s paintings offer the perfect imaginative canvas in which we might visualise this meeting and play together once our planning is done.

Please note: This exhibition is best viewed on a laptop, tablet or computer.

MAGICAL WOMEN are dedicated to making our work accessible to as many audiences as possible so we have created an audio description for blind or partially sighted audiences. Click on the play button below to hear an audio description of Ashley Ferrari’s solo exhibition:

“I am a self-taught artist who paints using oils.
I aim for my paintings to have a soothing
effect on the viewer and to create
feelings of peace and serenity. ”

“The ideas come from my head and
I try to create a fantasy, otherworldly feel.

I love the tactile nature of oils and
paint everything but the fine detail
using my fingers. ”

Tranquility – 20” x 16” Oil on Canvas, Nov 2020

“I paint mostly at night
when I feel most creative,
starting with a black-painted canvas
and building up layers of colour and light. ”

Stargazing – 8” x 20” Oil on Canvas, Dec 2020

“I am strongly influenced
by the seasons and how they
affect the nature of light. ”
“As an autistic artist, I’m irresistibly drawn
to exploring my favourite themes –
a glowing full moon reflecting from water,
or shrouded in mist and clouds.”

Mostar Dreaming – 16” x 20” Oil on Canvas, Dec 2020

“Sunlight filtering through leaves of a summer forest.

Skies laden with aurora, nebulae,
or an unearthly quantity of stars;

usually out of reach but
brought closer through imagination. ”

Wilderness – 20” x 16” Oil on Canvas, Dec 2020

“For me, Imbolc is the returning of light;
the first glow of dawn in the mist on the horizon.

To celebrate Imbolc I have shared a series of paintings
created during the winter that embody this idea.

This happened subconsciously;
I had not planned my paintings
but let whatever
was in my head onto the canvas.

I can see now that they represent both

acceptance of darkness
and

yearning for light.”

— ASHLEY FERRARI (ENCHANTED FANTASY ART)

Guestbook in response to the Artist’s Work

Everyone who sent in a post for Ashley’s Guestbook has been sent onto the artist. We shall share quotes on here with first name only on the website.

INCREDIBLE PAINTINGS IN ALL RESPECTS!

– RICK X NOW, Leeds, UK

Ashley, your work is magnificent and I enjoy every piece. I’m intrigued that you do it all with your fingers. That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing.

Stacey-george, Essex, UK

What a beautiful show! Great work Ashley!! Stunning and calm audio descriptions.

Hannah, Leeds, UK

Amazing!! Still cannot get over how talented you are. Tranquillity achieved – which is a feat to win over my brain! I am so mesmerised by them all. I always feel like I could never get tired of looking at them! <3

Charlotte, Leeds, UK

Loved looking at these…… Felt the energy and the peace and wonder you aimed to create. Just beautiful and food for the soul. Would love to see them at a physical exhibition one day. Lovely to gaze at.

Natalie, Leeds, UK

Total magic Ashley … you capture what I dream of. You are a true Artist 💚

Wendy, London, UK

Beautiful uplifting. Reflective skies. Majestic. Soothing. Connecting. Talented artist. Tactile. Stay with you but also dreamlike. Thankyou ashley ❤️❤️❤️

Donna, Leeds, UK

Just beautiful!

Heather, Danbury, CT USA

Follow our artist on Instagram here.

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