Project Description
The natural world is Venetia’s canvas. Her art encompasses ritual, astrology and a sensory connection to the cyclical rhythms of nature, as a pathway to healing and an expression of her deep love for mother earth. She creates ceramic vessels moulded on trees, paints with feathers, iron and organic materials weaving a medicine that connects her, and others to the felt but unseen. Underpinning her art is a passion for nature, the trees and earth tending.
At the heart of the exhibition is the ‘Spirit of the Land’, an interactive healing mandala. A spiral of cedar wood from a tree that died leads to a vessel containing iron water from a sacred spring. Water contains memory and a creative intelligence, and visitors are invited to stir it and make a wish for our planet, and anyone who needs healing. Most of the paintings here are created with inks and water from this precious spring. These are complemented by her new ‘night vision paintings’ which are witnesses of the alchemy of transmuting pain into paint, by tapping into an inner resource to bring peace.
Venetia offers spaces for people to connect to the stillness within and around them. By slowing down and engaging with the natural world through our senses, we reconnect with ourselves, and our minds calm down. Our ancestors valued the plants, trees and waters not only for medicinal use but for spiritual sustenance. By making art from nature and bringing it into a gallery she hopes to continue the cycle by encouraging people to go out and look at nature in a new light.
This ongoing engagement with nature has expanded to include her collaborative ‘Mandala of Hope’, on the terrace. Clay connects the human spirit with the natural world, our true essence, while the cedar tree offers healing, protection and abundance. The small clay vessels moulded on cedar cones represent individual expressions of unmet needs, co-created with family and friends.
