Art Work, The Lady of Shallot Series























This work is part of the Lady of Shallot series that I completed for my MA at Monash in 2007. Pastel on paper. It is done with natural pigments, ochre and burnt wood taken from Minnippi Park. It reflects for me the park itself after the severe bushfire of '06 went through it.

They are inspired by the dream like quality of the poem, "The Lady of Shallot"...the allegory of woman as prisoner, held by the unknown forces of a society outside of her control, a magic land where the only person who could have saved her only "sees" her on her death as she makes a valiant attempt to escape into the real world where people live, love and laugh. She, on the other hand, is tethered by the words in her head that tell her to stay in her tower and never look directly down onto the real world or "the curse will come upon her. she knows not what the curse may be and so she weaveth merrily, the Lady of Shallot." Tennyson.


The poem, "The Lady of Shallot", by Alfred Lord Tennyson, has always appealed to me. The loneliness of the artist and/or the female excluded from society with a fear of the world that has been cemented inside of her psyche from childhood. A voice within, the fear of "facing" life rings of the chadored woman, the hadjib, the bound foot, the parental voice that echoes throughout life.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thomas Hastings/Faithful Ebzery/Andrew Farrelly, Basis of my book, The Irish Constable.

Image
Thomas Hastings and Faithful Ebzery were born to farmers in the small village of Shanagolden, County Limerick. They married in April 1850 in Mitchelstown, County Cork, three days before boarding the ship, Emigrant which left from Plymouth bound non-stop for Moreton Bay. He was 32 and she, 26. He gave his profession on their marriage certificate as being “late of the Irish Revenue Police” and she, a domestic. He resumed the title “farm labourer” label on his entry into Australia. They were most likely part of the Monteagle migration, Shanagolden being part of the estates of Thomas Rice in Western Limerick. They most likely took advantage of the altruism of Lord Monteagle and his second wife who saw migration as a solution to the plight of the Irish during the Potato Famine. Migration appealed to the adventurous and the desperate. As a Revenue policeman, Thomas would have trained in Dublin before being posted outside of his Limerick locality. The Revenue police were loathed as they were
Read more

The Elusive Catherine/Kate/Kathleen Degnan/Dagnall/Degnann/Degnall

Image
Catherine Degnan was my great grandmother and I bear the name under which she died, Kathleen Hastings I had come to Chesterfield in May 2008 in search of memories of her in the land of her birth. I had her address from the 1861 English census, Church Alley, Chesterfield. Her father, according to the census, was a coal miner, originally from Roscommon, Ireland. I had had great trouble tracing Catherine to even being a “Degnan” by surname. She had given her name on her marriage certificate as Degnall. She maintained the “Degnall” on several birth certificates. Once she became Degnann and only once reverted to Degnan; never Dagnall as she had been called in Lancashire I was later to discover. She resumed Degnan once and that possibly after she had reconnected with her Chesterfield family. I only noticed that after I had down as a Degnan. Her maiden name is still given as Degnall on her death certificate. I had never thought that there could be such confusion over one’s own name. Confusion
Read more

Irish Lumpers

Image
I exist because of a potato; a potato covered in lumps called a Lumper. Original, eh?  Not an oompa loompa but a Lumper. I know that there are many other factors besides these potatoes that have lead to my existence; factors from all over the world: from France to Ireland; from England to Denmark; and finally Australia. However, if the lumper had not come to be, I would not exist.  I could have been a Margaret Thorkelsen, whom my mother would have chosen to marry instead of Stanley Charles James Hastings, whose ancestors migrated from a small village in county Limerick called Shangolden in 1850. But Lumpers were and I am. They came originally from Mexico; or somewhere around that part of the world; carried back to other parts of Europe in the holds of ships which had previously taken migrants to the new world, all hoping for a better life. Lumpers existed everywhere throughout Europe.  They had one fault: they were susceptible to 'the blight', a disease particular to so
Read more