MAGENTA ARTS NEWSLETTER FOR AUTUMN into WINTER 2011
As Autumn FireMESSAGE DURING THE HOLY NIGHTS into 2012 s begin to give way to Winter’s Earth , and we feel the need to
draw on our inner creative forces, I look forward to lighting the studio stove
and getting out the candles, the paints and the flapjacks.
But as a last blessing this weekend, after
a woodland walk amongst the bronzed trees, a sunset rainbow appeared over the
sea by Boulmer. This photo shows how
special it was but I was in wonder at the inner bands of green and magenta
seeming to lead to infinity!
I recently went to a Healing Crystals workshop
and found it so helpful to realise that we waken the healing qualities
in a crystal if we form a personal relationship to it. Winter invites us to
reawaken this connection to the realm of crystals- the light shining in the
depths of earth. Now, holding one in my
hand in gratitude, I am taught that each piece will have a quality that
radiates help in a particular aspect for the human. We are just surrounded by support and
healing- from the realm of plant, animal, and crystal. And the angels are they
standing back? Waiting for us to
minister to each other perhaps.
But at this time of All Soul’s we feel a
renewal of connection to those who have died.
This can bring a deep sense of loss and grief but mingled with love
undying. The first line of this poem of
Rumi’s came to me on one occurrence of this mood
BIRDWINGS
Your grief
for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where
you’re bravely working.
Expecting
the worst, you look, and instead,
here’s the
joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.
Your hand
opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were
always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be
paralyzed.
Your deepest
presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as
beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.
Translated by
Coleman Barks.
And the rest of the poem also spoke to me;
having just begun a training in Reflexology, I realise my hands are needing to
become just as he described here. A week
or two ago, I had no inspiration for an Autumn Newsletter. I even felt a barrenness, but now, out of
what Steiner calls ‘woefulness of heart’. Now one happenchance after another
feeds my soul and I am amazed at the synchronicity of it all (compared to the
‘sync’hronicity my phone and pc are supposed
to be engaged in!)
Sitting in the garden watching the birds
come and go on the bird table in the autumn sunshine, I recalled all the
influences I received over the Summer;
Marko Pogacnik in London offering
healing energies to the Olympic site; Caroline Chanter’s ongoing work in
Dornach on Rudolf Steiner’s connection to the Spiritual Worlds and Elemental
Beings through art and the Beings of Colours, Karl Lutwig’s Course in Stroud on the Northern
Mysteries in the Cycle of the Year who
led me to other researchers and workers in this field and I realized that a
whole new chakra system is being created with a web of interconnectedness which
is a Spiritual/Earthly Sphere of Love and Goodwill.
So I switch from despair at the world’s
sundering and pillaging and restricting to a feeling of hope and thankfulness.
Steiner’s Archetypal Plant
Another mood to close this letter is
engaging with the night. I walk out into
the dark and Jupiter is first to greet me; then Orion and the Plough,
Cassiopeia beckons too. And there shines the moon, fairly new so a profile
seems to wink at me. I listened recently to the children’s story, The Owl who
was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson; try it! Sometimes I catch the barn
owl in my headlights; the white hedgerow-hunting hermit of the night.
So, whether you are cosy by the fire or
star-gazing,
I send Love and Warm Wishes for many
Delights of the Winter Nights from
Jenny
WINTER
WORKSHOP DATES
Saturday 5th
November-Samhain Unwoven
Saturday
19th November (to be confirmed) Kindling the Embers
Saturday 3rd December Advent
Celebration
Friday 9th
December Solstice to Christmas
Wednesday 28th December
(to be confirmed) Inner Cosmic Rainbow Friday 6th
January 2012 Epiphany
Times: 10.00.-12.30., 2.00.-4.30.
£30 (£25) whole day, £15
(£12.50) half day, including all materials, refreshments and soup for lunch.
Please book in plenty of time. Pick-up
offered from station as usual.
--
4, High Buston
Alnwick,
N3663QH
Tel: 01665
830089 or 07909910107
www.magentaarts.co.uk
MAGENTA ARTS 
HIGH SUMMER
NEWSLETTER
Dear Friends,
Life
is but a dream…if we let Summer have her way.
With the strengthening sun forces and downpours of rain, the fields are
green or golden or red with poppies; the verges full of swathes of wild
flowers. Blackbirds and their young are forever pulling worms or tackling
gooseberry bushes-a thorny business
And what am I doing? Breathing out, learning
to relax by watching the beans climbing their poles and the shallots creating
families. I have the task of choosing plants for the workshops at Dilston Physic Garden
and wonder where is the red clover? The white clover is just everywhere this
year which is wonderful for the earth and for the bees and thus for us too. But
no red flowers to be seen.
I am also preparing for workshops on
Blossoming and Fruiting Trees. The same trees that spring into blossom ,
opening to the light of Spring with such trust and surrender I now watch as
they fill slowly their fruit and await the warmth from below as well as above
for ripening, sweetening and falling.
I fulfilled
a promise to myself to visit the puffins on Inner Farne before they all fly off
to their secret location in the middle of the Atlantic
till next spring. It is bird kingdom there and the place where St Cuthbert had
his hermit’s cell; the sky full of
terns, puffins, shags and more; all feeding their young on fruits of the sea.
Then, invited to a dusk walk on Blanch land
Moor to hear the nightjar’s song, again I feel we are witnesses
to a life that carries on regardless of the human realm. We sat on tree stumps in reverent silence, listening
to the churring call of this nocturnal visitor on the edge between forest and
moor.
Soon it will be time to store away
these memories with the apples and strings of shallots and bring them to life
in the flames of the hearth. Do you know the story of Frederick the Mouse? He stored summer
memories and fed his friends on winter nights with poems and stories gathered
while they were gathering seeds. I hope to offer such soul sustenance in the autumn
workshops.
I am also
offering a Leisure Course at nearby Amble entitled Art for Health and
Well-being , multi-media and inspired by the Cycle of the Year.
Wishing you all more dreaming time
before the Michaelmas wake-up call,
Love from Jenny
June 2011 SUMMER BULLETIN 
Greetings to you all,
The early summer weather has brought
some confusion, not just in the flower gardens but in my year plan which has
been in a bit of a pralaya and reluctant to become fixed. There has to be a
reason and I have been waiting for the way to clear. Mostly I seem to be being
told to do less galavanting! I wonder if any of you have had a similar
experience this year? Do we neeed to follow our own Planting Calendar,
maybe?! Also, having been in Switzerland
(painting for a week from Steiner’s original sketches) in Germany, and Paris ( for grandchildren's Birthday and a
Christening) during the Easter hot spell, I am now revisiting spring and
sowing my seeds in a windy Northumberland garden. My seeds of
soul are at last being sown for a summer fruitfulness I hope, in creativity and
workshops and holidays being planned.
I wished to put out a special
invitation to you for the Alnmouth Arts Festival Weekend on 25th
and 26th June; I will be there like last year offering
demonstrations and chance to have a go at the oil/rag painting style. I enjoyed
the whole event last year with its lively, friendly atmosphere.The village
throws open all doors and people come from far and wide.
I had to cancel some spring
workshops due to some disruptive building work next door to my peaceful idyll
and still ongoing…However I will have a one day workshop on the Archetypal
Plant on the 18th June, a Saturday; then two days at
the Dilston Physic Garden at Corbridge in August (17th and
20th) combining painting with Goethean Observation of our chosen
healing plant.
There will also be an OPEN
STUDIO Event at 4 High Buston on Sunday August 14th 11.am to
6.00.pm. All welcome
Then in September the Landscapes
of the Soul Painting and Walking Holiday at Spylaw, following last year’s
trial event which was hugely enjoyable and with only one drenching while
visiting the Wild White cattle!
I have a newly-built deck
area at the back of the studio with an even better view of the sea thanks to
son Giles! Now I can watch him through the binoculars on the rare
occasions he can get out kite-surfing. At other times in the long
dusk I am visited by the half-grown lambs, the nesting swallows, and worm
gathering blackbirds and watching the ever-changing skies and sea.
A review of the Painting week at the Goetheanum
Painting School with Caroline Chanter will be posted soon with
pictures and of course an up-date on workshops still waiting to be
fixed.
I do hope the summer will be gracious to you and
that we may meet up along the way,
With Very
Best Wishes from Jenny
SPRING NEWSLETTER
FEBRUARY 2011 
Spring seems a long time coming but I
hope by the time I send this out we will
feel 
the warmth again and 
see the
bewildering burgeoning growth in nature. Candlemas is long past but this
figurine from Ancient times of the spring/Bird Goddess I see in the bulbs as
they force their way through the frozen earth.
Then I came across Winifred Nicholson’s
Candlemas painting and found myself doing my own version. One sees so much more when copying a loved
painting- as I follow her eye I realize its subtlety. I was just reading how ‘Admiration’ as a
quality could be restored to us and bring more joy and meaning to our lives.* Well, I certainly admire her work. And she came from this area of Britain and
loved it too! The wild rough winters and glorious skies. There is even a
painting of Alnmouth beach of hers.
Next to the original she writes;
“The white star flowers are quivering, on fragile stems-the
first earthquake of spring.”
Also from this area is
her friend the poet Kathleen Raine and painting and poem coming from the same
source and sensitivity complement each other beautifully; Below is The Hyacinth-
So
we are encouraged to become aware of the invisible forces and wonders of this
spring activity while outwardly all seems bare and lifeless. I am attempting
this by studying the writing and sketches of Steiner on the work of the Elemental
Beings.
In April I am going to Dornach for a week
of painting with plant colours with
Caroline Chanter. She leads the Gerard Wagner
School there. We will be working from Steiner’s Sketches and
I have been influenced by Jane Sheppard to look at sketch for the Elementals and will run a day workshop
on this theme soon. So here is the work so far…
I have just spend the first day tending to
the garden; wonder and joy at the first anemones and irises, then attacking the
ground elder; what a mix of emotions does gardening bring!
My Calendar for this year is now taking
shape and you will find on the Events Page and Holidays Page some plans that are not yet
finalized. One new venture includes taking the Encounters with Nature workshops
to York, in the Steiner School
there,
On February 27th we
celebrate Rudolf Steiner’s Birthday and as this year it is 150 years since his
birth there will be celebrations all year and an opportunity to awaken interest
in his life and work.
I wish you all a rich and engaging year
ahead,
Love
and Blessings from
Jenny
*Admiration
is one of those emotions that, like love, takes you out of yourself, relieves
you from the dreadful self-absorption we all suffer from, raises mankind in
your estimation, at a time when so much lowers and degrades.
Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat/2010/10/interview-with-wd-wetherell.html#ixzz1EhdFkwFO