My beautiful friend Shan sent me this ethereal portrait she created of me a couple of years ago.
I decided it was high time to portrait~ise her as the elvin princess she is.
Shan and I met in boarding school, bonding over a lot of spirit and art. I fell in love with her dreamy, soulful, vibrant artwork of angels and women, and with her just as she is: deep, laughing, light-filled, honest, loving and glowing.
I decided back then that if I was ever asked what artists inspired me the most, Shan would be one of the answers.
And as I grow older, I realise the best way to be inspired is being inspired to be even more like yourself, just as you are.
And I think that's what Shan does. She makes everyone around her glow because she sees their goodness and their beauty.
And all I need to be is Leonie, with my own glow and my own way.
May we all be who we truly are, divine hotties that we are, Leonie
P.S. Check out more partying of the portrait variety at The Portrait Party.
Every so often I play little creative games for the day.One happy day was taking photos of every blue thing I saw with my cute old Samsung V3 dodgy digi cam. It's cute in that kind of four-year-old-digital-appliance-rendered-almost-vintage kinda way. One thing it does do nicely is take good photos of blue.
It was totally interesting to spend one day consciously observing and filtering for one particular colour... I ended up finding about 50 objects and made a blue~matrix of them...
Some of my favourite pics are...
my boss's water bottle (delicious)
a sign near our food markets...
this dangly-things-for-adults hangs from the ceiling in a shopping centre...
found this in the window of a kid's store... can that bird be any tweeter?
an observation on the state of blue: currently the trend is for more navy coloured blues than the vibrant turquoise-aqua ends of the field (which are more my vogue). i'm wondering if it's because i took these during winter and somehow colours are seasonally variable?
It seems so many of us are remembering our own beauty these days.
What if the whole world remembered? How can we remind ourselves on a daily basis of this love? How can we remind each other when we forget?
I have a burning passion of sharing the truth of beauty with the world. I want to set the whole world alight with love. Each creation is a baby of truth and a signpost towards divinity. I see images and feel words and wonder how I might be able to gift and share these out into the world.
I feel this is where art and business intersects as a vehicle for living my purpose and sharing my creations with the world. "Business" can have such funny connotations around it, and yet at the base of it all, everything is energy. Money is an energy exchange and the sharing of art is an energy exchange. When I can create with intention, offer it to the world to be sent out in wildly coloured envelopes or hung on studio walls, and receive an energy exchange back ~ that is a spirited and abundant cycle of inspiration and connection.
Which is a lot just to share ~ It would be amazing to have these messages of beauty, truth and spirit sent around the world.
For those beauties who asked (and every other soul beauty who might be interested) ~ you can buy prints and cards reminding us of our delicious truth here ~
Other joyful creations can be found at my Etsy Store.
Happy Remembering, in love and light, Leonie
(And a big, deep, sincere thank you and love to the Goddess in this picture who glowed in the light of our Secret Spy Tunnel, ablaze with all her beauty ~ my friend Sone)
* This letter was published in the Letters to the Editors section of the Proserpine Guardian newspaper on Wednesday August 1, 2007. I have to say just how beautiful it was to see the words "Grandmother Wisdom" on that page, wedged between letters of complaint against traffic lights and various governments. Whilst those things are important, I know which is the most important of all. *
May we all know what is truly important in our lives.
The last few weeks have been a cornucopia of pleasure and adventure. I've been dancing at concerts dressed up as a cowgirl angel, waking up before dawn to go on a photography adventure with a bus friend, sitting in sacred circles, spending the weekend at a healing retreat with my love, our dog and a dear dear friend, walking in the bush, canoeing in misty lakes, having all day slumber parties, climbing mountains in pyjamas and just generally being amazing.
Most importantly, I've been not comparing, sitting in the silence of my own life, committing to the sacred joy of keeping some stories all to myself and remembering my own beauty.
May I share this knowing:
you need not be like anybody else. in fact, please do not be like anybody else but you. you were made the way you are for a sacred, special reason that is still unfolding. live your life as it appears in your own vision ~ not anybody else's, but yours. you are amazing. you are needed. you are all kinds of flavours of magnificent, delicious and inspiring just as you are, right now.
nobody is any more beautiful than you.
remember your own beauty. who you are is enough. your precious life is enough.
i write this with a tender heart that's been finding its own way back to those knowings.
I met her in the desert last year, this goddess of a Taurean Woman.
She spent her days walking around the earth, when we met she was exploring the ochre tracks of the Northern Territory.
We became firm friends the week we were together, there in the desert, dancing in the mouths of wide caves together.
Sometimes I see her face on women in the shopping centres, so far away from the walking trails and the desert, and I think of her sweet soul and all our adventures out there.
Megan Lotus Hands, I'm loving you and sending a blown kiss and dandelion out into the wind to find you. I wish you the deepest of happiness and the greatest of joys. You are a treasure.
Books can be our best friends, our inspirations, our wisdom jewels and our delights. They nourish us deeply. It's time to nourish Mama Earth for providing us with all the paper in those books! Have a tree planted for every book you buy at Eco-Libris.
Make your adventures to discover the world a healthy thing for the world too! You can make your flights carbon neutral here. (With thanks to my lovely name~sister Leonie Wise for these two links!)
Instead of birthday and Christmas cards or presents you feel you *should* buy for friends and family~ why not gift them with a good feeling? You can gift them with the pleasure that a third world community has just been changed by being given a business loan, animals, tools, water or education. You can gift Hope through Oxfam Unwrapped Australia, UK and American websites. Plus, it feels kinda fun to tell someone you bought them a goat for their birthday.
Become a lender to an entrepreneur in a developing country to help them fulfill their dreams. You can become a lender to change lives through Kiva.
Planning a wedding, and don't know what to have as those bags of sugared almondy thingies? I say give them a little bag of seeds, and a card that says a tree has been planted and named in their honour. What a beautiful emblem of your growing love that could be!
One of the most beautiful parts of going home was meeting the new loves of my brother and big sister. They both met their loves on the same night a moon or two ago, and fell in love. My earthy Capricornian sister has found an earthy Virgo man. My ocean Piscean brother has found his water Cancerian lover.
My heart is so FULL seeing my siblings so in love and happy in their hearts. Love truly is a light, and there is this special luminous that is radiating from my brother and sister now.
And the best thing of all... is I have another two hearts in my family.
And the other beautiful thing... was seeing, experiencing, honouring and feeling all the LOVE forms there are in this world, and this little world of family.
my tribe... all descendants of my grandmother... we give thanks to her for our lives and loves...
my brother with his chilluns
water signs in lurve
dancing daddy
my mum's dear friend and the resident town crier/pirate gives a bit of loving to great aunt lucy...
utterly sweet
i adore my cousin michael. at the party he said to me "you don't often get a party as good as this unless somebody dies. let's do this again next year." right on, cousin-brother. i'll see you then.
my sweet cousin david with his lovely wife and bebes
my gorgeous gran with her older sister... yes, that's right *older* sister. my dear great aunt lucy is a fuscia wrapped fairy, still sparkling at 94. their brother john was partying along with them too, at his ripe age of 93. i love that these two sisters have been loving each other for ninety years.
group hug with my new brother from the cosmic uterus, my mum and brother
earth lovers
my cousin michael serenading my gran... can you see the love between them?
my big bro still dancing with his little girl...
loving great aunt lucy is one of the greatest joys...
my gran is a goddess queen... how fabulous is that outfit? (care of her Op Shop of course) her escorts are her three grandsons and two great-grandsons...
And my very own spunkeroo to love and share it all with...
There is so much love in this world. So much love in this family.
All her life, she decided that the best way to live was to Dream of Magnificence.
Everywhere she walked, she Saw Magnificence: in the trees, the blossoms, the stray dog at midnight, the fire on the hills, the song she found herself singing beneath her breath.
Everyone she met, she Saw Their Magnificence: their radiant possibility, their hearts of gold, their divinity, the angel in their eyes.
And anytime she Forgot, she looked in the mirror, and spoke:
I see the Beauty in You. I see the Beauty in You. I see the Beauty in You.
It's been ten dear years since you left this world for the rainbow journey. I have been through times of deep grief, disbelief, longing and missing. Now mostly though, I just feel incredibly and intensely blessed that I knew you and loved you, and love you still. I have discovered how expansive love truly can be (even as the tears rumble down cheeks like thunder over mountains). And babe, I've learned about all sorts of magic and miracles like kinship and starlight and spirit and healing and myself. Thank you, my brother. Thank you.
I want to honour the beautiful things I remember about you - the way you smelled: a mixture of smoke and candy and cologne and sweat your cackle your big heart and sensitive soul the way you loved your little sisters and brother your little blue car that was always filled with white bags of milk bottles and candy teeth how happy you were on the farm how funny you were your long arms and legs that you inherited from your dad those baby blues of yours.
I was watching Enough Rope last night, and Susie Maroney was interviewed. Her story made me think of you so many times. She had cerebral palsy just like you. She was an athlete just like you. She did things that nobody else in the world did just like you.
And she lost her brother too. And through all her tears, she said: "I'm just so proud that he was my brother."
Just like me.
Last week, back at home, all of us: Mum, Dad, Mary, Brett, Becka, Sharne, Graham, Chris, Joshy, Alyssa and me - we went to the stone with your name on it and smiling face, and we sat around in a circle in the graveyard, your stone included, all of us laughing, sharing, sitting in silence, teaching our neice and nephew about their Uncle Clinty. Mum cracked open a jar of barley sugar as a little tribute to your sweet tooth, and we all ate them, leaving one on your grave.
Looking back I think about how remarkable we are. A family sitting in a graveyard, eating lollies with their brother. We always were remarkable. That's what love does to you.
Big love, Bony
P.S. How are those stars up there? I bet they are just beautiful.
what is work but a place to: try out my brudda from anudda mudda's instant photo flickr-ing from his nokia wear silly teal hats have a uber tea addiction share giant donuts have communal loaves of fruit toast hang with da boyz of my heartz.
cousins and sisters and Grand-Mothers and soulmates = family
And all at once, the girl remembered where her home was.
In the bosom of her heartland mountains, in the arms of her tribe.
And some soul~tunes to play along at home...
"Cause everyone I love is here, Take me home. Take me home.
Once in a while I return to the fold With people I call my own
Even if time is just a flicker of light And we all have to die alone
What does it mean when you belong to someone When you're born with a name, when you carry it on
It means that I won't give in, won't give in, won't give in 'Cause everyone I love is here
All at once, and I'll show you how to get here"
~ Finn Brothers, Won't Give In
I'm feeling very very blessed and very very soaked with love.
I have a homeland that is paradise, a GrandMother who is a magnificent and inspiring tribal elder and a big crazy family who loves each other.
I am one lucky girl.
with love and light, Leonie
P.S. Thank you deeply for all the comments celebrating Magnificent Marion. I am so grateful for the outpouring of love and joy. I absolutely feel like the world is a better place for our crones, and our communities who celebrate them.
