Art from Within

We are seated cross-legged in the Roundhouse at the Kalikalos Centre in the village of Kissos. Today we are four women, including our facilitator, Annabel Aguirre, an Art Therapist from Cornwall. The Roundhouse is a wonderful liminal structure that is half-indoor and half-outdoor. Its eight walls are made of bamboo blinds which can be rolled to reveal different views, different pictures. Behind us is the vegetable garden providing salad leaves and cucumbers and the promise of tomatoes to come. In front of us, the view begins with roses and hydrangeas in front of the characteristic fish-scale slate rooves of Pelion and, way beyond, three miles and 1500 feet below, the dark blue Aegean.

((The photograph shows Annabel at work with a different group two days later.)

Annabel invites us to lie down, relax and focus on our breathing. With my head on a cushion, I close my eyes and inhale scents of wild thyme and oregano and feel the warm breeze on my skin. We are guided into a meditation on where we’ve come from, where we are and what the future might hold and encouraged to stay with any images that come up. In a dream like state, I see images of flowers and of the earth and imagine my own birth 46 years ago.


We come back to the world and each other and each take a board and some paper. The suggestion is to paint or draw from the images that arose during the meditation, either on one piece of paper, or several.

In front of each of us is a pallette of poster paints, a selection of brushes, a jam jar of water. I am apprehensive and excited – painting is something I never do but often yearn to – to put colours on paper, to translate inner to outer in images. My inner critic is alive and well, reminding me of a school report where a teacher wrote – ‘her painting lets her down’ and a recent foray into art in adult education where two of us were relegated to copying pictures of boats from a book.

I look up and out into the view, the forests, the flowers, the slate topped rooves and see above it all, Helios, the sun god, warming and nourishing everything. I begin with that, a circle, red, orange, aflame – it’s the sun and it’s also my head at birth, entering the world, burning with new life. I am pleased that the marks on paper look something like I intended. Then I’m stuck – I want to paint the thighs of the mother giving birth but have no idea how to mix the colour of flesh – with Annabel’s guidance I find an approximation – red, white, a little green, some yellow, a dip of this, wash the brush, dip in again and an alchemy takes place.



The process is meditative, pleasurable, companionable – we are working in silence but around us is the hum of the garden, its bees and cicadas and beyond, the road to the village where the vegetable and bread sellers pass announcing their wares.

Eventually I fill the large sheet of paper with my sun at the centre and an ocean at the bottom representing the mystery of where we came from. The curve of the woman’s belly doubles as the forested hills, the trees, her pubic hair.

As I paint, I feel connected to where I am, here in Pelion. I am also provoked into thinking about my mother, creativity, my role in the world and how to move through the forests when I can’t see my destination. I have an impulse to add roses to the woman’s thighs and experiment with a few but then give up, not wanting to spoil the shape of my painting. Thinking about my mother giving birth to me makes me tearful and full of gratitude and I see that in my painting, the mother is more powerful than the woods.

When the four of us share our paintings and talk about the ideas that gave rise to certain images, we see patterns and connections. The paintings reveal and also conceal. I saw things in others’ work that they didn’t talk about, or they talked about in a way that seemed at odds with the image. As someone who works primarily with words, it was fascinating to wear my painting as a mask and yet be aware that others are guessing the various faces behind it.

I enjoyed this session. Although I shed some tears, I felt at peace afterwards and was pleased I’d chosen to put past, present and future together. A birth is full of pain – and my mother tells me horror stories about mine – and joy too. Here in the natural beauty of Pelion and the community of Kalikalos, the world in all its complexity, joy and sadness is reborn everyday as Helios rises over the mountains, bringing his warmth and fire.

Victoria Field, Cornwall, England

Victoria Field teaches creative words for health and well-being and was a facilitator at Kalikalos 10th – 17th July 2009. Her next open workshop is in North Wales in September – see http://www.falpublications.co.uk/falhtm/caemaboncourse.htm