"Tree Goddess of Compassion"
Acrylic on Reclaimed Canvas
Herstory Wombmanifesta
November 2006 Northern Thailand: I Rolled down a
cliff after being flung from a jeep, a tree cradled me as gently as she could,
saving me from continuing to hurdle into the ravine below. The most
compassionate face I had ever seen filled my gaze upon opening my eyes. It was
the face of a great mother, ancient but also timeless. She held my hand and led
me to the top of the cliff, where even with a fractured humerus and dislocated
shoulder, I lifted my arms and cried out to the forest "I'm
Alive!" When I came back from the hospital, two weeks later, I asked
everyone who had been at the scene of the crash who the mysterious woman was? I
wanted to know out of all of the men who were there, why was it a woman who had
helped me reach the top of the mountain? "There was no woman,” they
replied.
This Tree Spirit symbolizes for me, the wise mothers, maidens, and witches, who
have gone down throughout the ages unrecognized, but continue to guide us with
compassion. Where are the female Buddhas, and philosophers of the ages? They
are all around us, but not found in His Story. The pages have been burned as
witches at the stake. Instead of a veil over the eyes of women, it is an
invisible veil of conditioning entrenched in our gaze of women that must be
lifted. My art is dedicated to all women's voices becoming unveiled in this
precise moment in time. It is time that we stop hiding our powers. It is
a time to honor the mother. Do not be afraid of the intuitive, the
mystical, the invisible that men can't necessarily always see, that we have
been taught to deny or downplay. I make for you the invisible, visible.
This
is a great key to the whole peace of our planets healing: Loving Mother
Earth. After working with Waste Busters and sorting trash through the
festival circuit I became more conscious about the materials I use. My canvases are reclaimed, mostly found
on the streets of the Bay Area. I encourage everyone to make beauty out of the
discarded.
To humans everywhere taking off masks of oppression, I am thankful and
honored to share in this dialog with you. I owe everything to my family, a
long line of artists who always have encouraged me to express myself as a
human. I dedicate my art to 'womben' everywhere; may their voices be heard.
Painting
these has been a powerful process. Often tears would mix in with the paint, the
strokes of my hand shaky with energetic reverberations. There is no way of
telling, but I am sure I can feel the ghosts of many a wise crone guiding my
brush.
Hailey Malaika O. Clarke ~ BA Art Major UCSC
2008
