Dance The Old Ways

Dance the old ways
Trust the knowing
Mend and heal
Energy flowing

These words are posted by Cari Ferraro; they are a spell she wrote & I recommend going over to see her thoughts & pictures. Also, Cari’s website has images of her books on the theme of “spelling words” and further explanation on how she came to write them is here. She writes about going back to the origins of the words & what a spell originally was.

I love these words- I really ‘feel’ them, & immediately wanted to create a piece of work with them. I didn’t know what until I actually started…
Running the words through my mind I scanned paints, inks, pencils… picking up & putting back down… til I came across some wood dyes & pounced on them, settling on a dark oak & spring green combination.

A few brush-fulls of colour, a paint-roller and water, repeating the words as I rolled them across the paper to capture the sense of earthiness I was feeling… ‘dance the old ways’…earthiness… & ancient woodland… as I worked across the page & added layers I knew I wanted water too… a sense of a stream through the forest… ‘energy flowing’… oops, stop before I over-work it.

While it dried I started on something for my ‘Blog Candy’… if you want some there’s room for a few more to sign up! (this is a nudge for someone to send their address, not mentioning a name but it begins with M & ends with L). I couldn’t do much as the wood dyes dry quickly & I was soon back to cari’s spell.

The dyes work well as a background, having a translucency & a sheen that varies with the dilution, so the colour seems to have depth & movement… Questions… how & what to use for the lettering? would the colour bleed or should I use a fixative? What colour to write in? Here lies a lesson that I regularly preach but frequently forget… always prepare a spare bit of paper to do samples on… huh!… ‘trust the knowing’….aha… Pencil crayons…


So, I used a dark brown crayon & a built-up letterform with the idea of the words dancing & blending with the background… in the top three lines I softened the colour with some bright green, & some blue in the last line. The spirals in the letters just crept in with a mind of their own! I was particularly pleased with the ‘g’ in ‘energy’ (any calligraphers or lettering artists will know what I mean, getting excited about one letter!)


At this stage, it was ok, but needed something else… more texture… so was pondering what next when I remembered some ceramic pieces I had been gifted to use in my work… these two are perfect in shape, texture & colour… a sense of a stone circle perhaps? They are a bit too heavy, literally, to attach to the paper, so I still have to finish this piece, but at least I know what the next stage is.


Now, the thing is, once you have written or spoken something- it is ‘out there’ open to interpretation by whoever reads or hears it… I have no idea what cari was actually thinking or feeling, though I can make a guess… I interpret what I hear & feel from her words, as you will. We may pass them on, hopefully with a similar intention… but no matter what we see in them the essence of cari’s intention remains… out there with a distinct energy pattern… that reverberates whenever they are read, thought or spoken.

(note to cari: thanks for sharing your words & hope you don’t mind what I’ve done with them)