threads of the spiderwoman: Valerianna Claff

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Ravenwood Forest

"Root People" - water color by Valerianna Claff

Yellow spider on a very yellow flower

It was my pleasure to spend a few days with Valerianna at her studio and home in Ravenwood Forest, in Chesterfield, Western Massachusetts. Valerianna is an artist, a teacher, a sound healer, and a ceremonialist, and she is also, truly, the stewardess and friend of her forest home, which abounds with the numinous presence of elemental beings.....as well as the physical presence of birds, deer, bear, and butterfly.

It was good to meet an artist who speaks so elequently about the Numina, the intelligence one feels emanating from the trees, the stones, the land. An intelligence conversant and responsive to the artist as she offers reciprocity and love with her art and her music. I especially responded to her recent series of watercolors that envision the luminous energy felt within the forest, sensed but rarely seen, the living essence one feel is dancing somewhere in the distance, rising from the forest floor or flickering among the dark branches of tree and root, enchanting and mysterious as the call of a songbird in the silent wood.

"Earthlight", watercolor on paper, 15in X 22in, VClaff 2013

To me, the artist captures beautifully that invisible, but potent, Numina, brilliant and intense, humming within the soil, perhaps rising at certain auspicious times, distant luminosity. Thank you for a magical weekend! To learn more about the artist and her work, as well as her classes, visit her website: www.ravenwoodforestarts.com

RavenWood Forest - water color by Valerianna Claff

I especially responded to Valerianna's paintings of what she calls "Root People". She says she sees the trees often morphing into faces......something I often experience myself. Faces in the stone, faces in the roots. (As if the elemental beings occasionally manifest a face, a human form, a voice, just so we can know them, briefly, in our own terms.........)And perhaps, from those brief moments, the mythic world emerges, the Fey folk dance at twilight, the Green Man makes his play. And at the roots live those beings, that wonder.

"Root People" - water color by Valerianna Claff

I walked among the trees
I wore the mask of the deer
I am that laughing man
with eyes like leaves

You will feel my breath, warm at your neck.
I will rise in the grass, a vine caressing your foot.

I am the blue eye of a crocus
opening in the snow
a trickle of water, a calling bird,
a shaft of light among the trees.

You will hear me singing
among the green groves of memory,
the shining leaves of tomorrow.

I'll come
with daisies in my hands,
we'll dance among the sycamores
once more