In a busy conference hall, with an amazing array of stalls catering for all Pagan needs/desires, the artwork on one stall captivated me, drew me and the piece we ended up with still gives me gentle inspiration daily. That is how I came to know the work of Sarah Vivian.
From the incredibly skillfully detailed, slightly surreal landscapes and natural features in the works in Gallery A on her website, to the amazing, almost photographic, both day and night, seascapes in Gallery B, Sarah’s work still takes my breath away.
I caught up with Sarah to get a bit more insight into the charming and talented woman who has created this work.
KM – When did your artistic work begin, was it with your weaving & textile work?
As a child I did a great deal of drawing and painting as well as a variety of different crafts and as a teenager I vowed that I was going to be an artist. Unfortunately my parents insisted on a “proper career” instead & so I took an education degree with art, craft & English. I got accidentally sidetracked into weaving and it was a sidetrack which lasted a very long time, because once you have a business with staff & premises it becomes self-perpetuating and difficult to stop. It was always my dream to be able to paint instead.
KM – Your early career focused around textiles for 20 years , so how did you manage to change that into painting and follow your dream?
The weaving changed & diversified into all sorts of textile work, then circumstances necessitated the sale of my gallery but I continued to make textiles to supply to other places. My whole life changed with being able to move to Cornwall in 1996, and I started painting again, painfully starting with basic exercises and teaching myself – but I was not able to spend much time on this as I would have liked, as I was still earning my income with textiles.
KM – Would you like to talk about the final transition from textile work to becoming a full-time painter?
It was actually due to the death of my father in 1999. He had moved down to Cornwall too, and lived in Penzance. We were very close, and I was aware that despite an apparently successful career as a Georgian restoration architect, he felt a deep & bitter sense of disappointment at things he had not achieved; broken dreams and failed expectations. So when he died suddenly and unexpectedly after a routine operation, it focussed my mind on my own mortality, and on the importance of getting on and doing what you believe in. When you are dying, it is not what you have done that you regret, it is what you have not done – and I do not want to suffer that kind of regret. His death was a kind of “wake –up call” to pay more attention to my own dream; I had already started painting again & wanted to do it full time, but this decided me to go ahead straight away. Also, on a vital practical level, I am deeply grateful to my father, and to Divinity, or the Universe in general, that with a small inheritance I was then a little more financially secure and was better able to risk becoming a full time artist.
KM – Move to Cornwall – from your website it looks like your home and surroundings are perfect – how did you come to find them – do you feel the Gods had a hand in it? Did you actively work magic to find your place?
My home is perfect for me; just big enough to live & work in – any smaller and there would not be enough room, any bigger would be unnecessary & just cost more. And it is in my perfect place in the Universe; I visited Cornwall as often as I could all my adult life & often parked in St Just to walk down Cot Valley to the sea, and dreamed of living where I could open my back gate and walk there – which I now do! So when I looked for a place in Penwith, I already knew exactly where to aim for, and I would like to think that the Gods had a hand in providing exactly the right place, a place that even had exactly the right room to be my studio. I did not work any specific magic for the cottage as such, but in a wider sense I was extremely focussed, determined and clear about where I wanted to be, and what I wanted to be able to do, which I think is the essential factor in any magic.
KM – website says Cornish Artist – After nearly 13 years living there do you now consider yourself Cornish?
I do consider myself to be Cornish, but because of my distant ancestry rather than the time span I have lived here. I can trace my ancestry back to 1112, and it is Cornish all the way apart from the last five generations, and even some of them came to live here, or came here to attend Camborne School of Mines. When I first visited Cornwall at the age of 12 on a family holiday I felt that I had come home, and knew the land, and felt that “something” was right that I had not even known was wrong. This feeling grew every time I visited, and has grown even stronger since living here – it is now a terrible wrench to ever leave!
KM – Is your connection to the Cornish landscape any different from your connection to other landscapes you have lived in and painted?
Yes, completely different, although the only other landscapes I have ever painted were Somerset as a teenager, and a few of Dartmoor when I lived in Devon. These were straight landscapes without the added factor of the Animate Landscape, and I did not have the same sense of connection to the land. In the last few years I have been to Brittany & Ireland, mainly to go around Ancient Sites, and with the intention of painting sets of similar sites – for example St Michael’s Mount near Penzance & Mont St Michel in Brittany – but despite having thousands of beautiful photographs I could use, I have not felt inspired to paint from them and have realised that I cannot. For me to produce anything meaningful, I need to have a deeper connection than just holidays & photos; Cornwall & especially Penwith are in my heart and bone and blood in a way that no other place can be.
KM – All the art I have seen seems to be completely grounded in your love of the land, in all its beauty and power. Which came first, your Paganism or your painting?
Painting began as a child, and in some senses Paganism did too, in that I would talk to the apple trees in the garden & stroke the moss on the stones, & wish to fly away with the seagulls. Maybe children are naturally Pagan in this way; for me there was an added factor that I read huge quantities of myth & legend at an early age which fuelled my vivid imagination, & I lived more in fables of the past in my head than in reality. My teenage years coincided with the hippy “flower power” years in Bath, and we went around in flowery clothes, hugging trees (yes, really) having poetry happenings, handing out flowers and reading the little white book of Maharajah Mahesh Yogi. There were a lot of similarities to Paganism, and I think that many “flower power” people must have developed into Pagans. It was not until later years that I read about Paganism and realised that I must be a sort of landscape-loving Pagan too. But it was not until moving to Cornwall that every element of loving the land here and being able to paint again, came together with my Paganism, (which I could describe as Animist/Druid/Craft) which enabled me to perceive the Animate Landscape for the subject matter for my work – so all the elements are inextricably intertwined.
KM – You have mentioned the Animate Landscape several times; what exactly does this mean to you?
The Animate Landscape is the living spirit part of this natural world. Most pre-christian belief systems, including the Celtic, teach us that the earth is not a dead body, but is infused by a spirit which is its life and soul, and that the landscape is full of places where spirit is present. Throughout history and all around the world you will find landscape features given names & associations, & made Sacred – wells, springs, islands, caves, mountains and high places, track-ways, stones, trees, groves. Every time we experience it, this presence encourages us to make an act of imagination which personifies & humanises the place to us. Then we perceive its qualities as a personality – the Genius Loci, the Spirit of place, which exists beyond ordinary reality. Often this Animate Landscape shows itself in faces and forms which remind us of human features, which personalizes it and gives us more connection to it, so many of my paintings have rocks or trees with faces, or have shapes which are like people or creatures. In “Snoozing in the Sun” the smiley rocks are happily enjoying the sunshine, the “Serpent Stump in St Loy Woods” is very alive, and the line of heads in the rocks of “Rock Shute at Cot Valley-The Umpires” are enjoying their game of skittles with the stones being carried up by the waves. Some paintings seem to be a straightforward representation, such as “Lanyon Quoit & Carn Galver, Winter Evening”, but here the main stone looks like a pre-historic blue whale swimming through the air & there is a small dog-like guardian spirit under the stones. Other paintings are more subtly animate, such “Earth, Air, Fire & Water. Sennen Beach” where there are small fire dragons in the flame and faces in the clouds.
Some paintings contain references to spiritual symbols, such as “The Door in the Clouds” which is a stairway to heaven & is also, partially, the Druid Awen symbol with three main rays of light, or inspiration. Another symbolic painting is “Ancient Lights, Full Moon over Land’s end from Carn Bosavern, St Just” based on the triangle, and threes – three light sources in a triangle, three seashells, three lines of window panes, a triple legged candlestick, and so on. Other paintings again are simply a celebration of the sheer beauty of West Penwith, such as “The Homecoming. Sunset at Cape Cornwall”- the soul responds to beauty, so it is all manifestations of the Divine in the landscape.
KM – Does your spirituality actively inform your artistic method & techniques? If so, how?
I see the act of painting itself as an act of magic – the same single minded concentration & focus is required, and it is obvious alchemy to create something of meaning from coloured paste. It is also an act of love, care and attention to the spirits of the land – an act of worship. While I am painting I consider the essence or energy of the spirits or symbolism I am putting in, talk to them, and most importantly, blow life into the painting, gently but with feeling! I treat them as if they are alive – after all, if I don’t consider that my Animate Landscapes are alive, how can anyone else?
KM – How do you see your artistic future evolving?
In many ways I want to continue doing more of the same – I love my life so very much as it is, that I really don’t want any radical changes, please, Universe! I want to continue living where I do, continue painting the spirit of the land & making the invisible visible for others, continue painting in the detailed style I use, and continue putting out thousands of cards & prints so that my message of the beauty, power, magic and aliveness of this land is sent out into the world.
The evolution I would hope for is that I could get better at it; my paintings are becoming increasingly detailed, and complex in terms of subject matter, and are therefore getting increasingly difficult to paint. I am planning some paintings of ritual celebrations which are more overtly Pagan, as well as being potentially even more difficult, and also a set of Ancient Sites paintings, and I hope to exhibit these in 2010, or, as they are taking longer & longer time, possibly 2011.