The gift of writing and creativity

I am absolutely delighted to introduce my colleague, Dr. Janice Jones.  

I have invited Janice, whom I admire very much, to share with us about one of her original works - "Into the Forest".  You can view a YouTube of this creative work here.  Not only is Janice the most beautiful person, she is also incredibly creative and today she is sharing her story about the creation of "Into the Forest", as a writer and artist. 
(I am pinching myself - this is such an honour! Thanks so much Janice!!!)

Into the Forest is a collage of visual images from my original – and unfinished - artwork.

I began to draw that visual story of love and danger many years ago. It became a kind of meditation on the past, and a way for me to reconcile feelings of love and guilt. At nights I spent quiet hours creating a visual representation of my life and the story of our early years together while my little girl Emily slept. It comforted me to tell that story through images, and to hide in tiny lettering ‘secret narratives’ in parts of the artwork. I loved the mystery of that – glimpses of stories that cannot be shared. Over the years, I would take the drawing out, and add a little more. Eventually, my daughter had become an adult – with her own stories and secrets. She is an inspiration to me – her courage and resilience leave me in awe so that my hand froze above the paper. I realized that I could not finish the art work for two reasons. Although it had started as my story, Emily was also central to the narrative. As she grew up I realized that it was not my place to tell her story. Also – age changes our body and our mind – my hand now has some of the tremor of age. I can no longer craft those steady fine lines.

The blank page – pregnant silence.

A quarter of the page is empty. I will never finish it. There is something primitive in my reluctance to finish the story of a life – and particularly my daughter’s life. Ideas and images have such power. We are beings of spirit – and we recognize deeper meanings without being able to speak them: the page will always remain unfinished. Space allows the future to happen.I wanted to share the work and the telling of my story. So –I photographed sections of the artwork and created a film, with music and words. It is slower than I would wish – and not as smooth, but I hope that it speaks to those who watch it. In many ways, it is the story of so many women who love dangerously.

In the company of wolves.

At the base of the picture is my first husband. I fell in love with his beautiful blue eyes and raven-black hair, but his mind was broken. Naively I thought I could heal him: he had so much promise and talent. Instead I began a descent into his world. As so often happens in life, I had decided to give up and move on when I discovered that I was pregnant. Now I could not go to university. I was scared, but full of wonder that a new life was growing inside me. With him, I moved to a city far away from my family. He was unfit to work. The area was poor and violence was common. Like Persephone I travelled a long way into his underworld so that I hardly remembered who I was. But, when Emily was born I found a purpose beyond myself.

However, his illness became extreme, and we were in grave danger. I fled, returning home to my family.

I dressed and acted as if I were well, but inside I carried much fear and guilt – as if I had brought the darkness back with me. It took a long time for the night-terrors to stop, for the hairs on the back of my neck to stop rising, for my heart to stop crashing when darkness fell, the phone rang, or I saw a man with dark hair.  He never became well, and it grieved me always that he had little happiness in his life, for I still loved the person within the illness. Some healing came when our adult daughter re-connected with her birth father.

Through her kindness to him I have found a degree of self-forgiveness and acceptance that I did what had to be done.

Looking back – dancing across time. At the end of the film, I dream of reconciliation – of a return to love, freedom from guilt, and a rebirthing of youth and strength. As if we were young again, we dance through the stars and under the immense map of the universe. Those stars map our histories – they are our life force and genetic fire - transmitted through our daughter and her baby sons. We live again, renewed, beautiful, tender and in love. We forgive and are forgiven.

Images and metaphors in my poetry and films

As an artist and writer I am sometimes surprised and a little shocked by how dark my symbolic language is. Nobody would imagine that this cheery middle aged woman is inhabited by a fertile and complex layering of myths, fairy-tales and dreams and gives life to that vocabulary through storytelling. In this story, the wolf does not devour – but is absorbed into the spirit of the girl. He is as vulnerable, as full of hope, and as lost as she is. She carries his shadow with her always, becoming part wolf. In my mythic world, the female is powerful – a shape-shifter. I am greatly influenced by the myth of Persephone and her transition into the underworld – by love and sacrifice and redemption.

At a superficial reading, Persephone’s tale is one of a girl who is savagely taken by Dis – God of the underworld and death. She is made Queen of the underworld. Her mother Demeter (the corn goddess) challenges the gods by making the earth freeze so that all fruit and grain dies. Eventually her daughter is allowed to return. But – Persephone eats 6 pomegranate seeds – the only food she consumes in the underworld over 6 months. This means she must return to the underworld and to her husband every six months. In the film you will see images of fertility linked to the pomegranate. Persephone/Demeter is a unity that represents the turning of the seasons.

In my writing and artwork women are creatures of the spirit, connected to the earth and the stars. Their spiritual abode is the forest and the ocean – their rhythms are those of the moon and the waters. A shape-shifter, woman is both nurturer and destroyer.

Dr Janice K. Jones (jonesja@usq.edu.au)

Now the exciting news is that Janice has just published a book which includes the creative writings of many of the pre-service teachers she has worked with.  Janice has a gift for the creative, in both art and writing, so please check it out here: 

http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Weaving-Words--Personal-and-Professional-Transformation-through-Writing-as-Research1-4438-5452-2.htm 

Thank you so much Janice for sharing the story behind this work and for being the creative treasure that you are :)  Janice can be contacted at the email address above.

You can read more about Janice's published research through her eprints here.