Messenger for Friend Foxglove

Unfinished painting using non toxic oil paint and walnut oil on repurposed door

Foxglove is one of the plants in Occult Botany, said to be magical and potent. If we think of plant kingdom, it also makes me think of fairy kingdom. I imagine them being whole worlds, kingdoms with different laws and customs that were once known to us, if folktales are anything to go by. The further we came from the land, into urban and industrial settings, the more bizarre stories of Fairys and talking plants became. If the humans are the youngest of all the kingdoms, as Robin Kimmerer refers to, then we still have much to learn. We need to listen to the plants, observe and respect them,

Artist Paul Nash knew about the power of the land, he said there was a source hidden that he described as genus loci. There was a spirit behind all of his paintings when he painted place. He said it was the reality that lay behind the ordinary. It was a 'super reality he discovered in surrealism in the 1930's to a reality more real which lay beneath.

This to me, refers to the plant kingdom, this hidden realm, that the scientists are only finding out about now, according to the author in Hidden Universe. Linneaus said that 'you only know something or will save something when it is named' and yet it is believed there are a trillion un named species. Animist cultures, have a name for everything in a place, or a way of describing a place and its function. It is this that inspires me the story, the language, reflecting the spirit of the land.