Monday, March 28, 2016

Easter - Its Pagan Origins


 The Anglo-Saxon Goddess of sunrise and of spring was known as Eostra or Eastre and her sacred month was Eastremonath, the Moon of Eostre.  One of the largest fertility festivals of the ancient calendar, Eostra, falls on the spring equinox when day and night are in equal balance and life has returned in profusion.


Like all the church's "moveable feasts," Easter shows it's pagan origin in a dating system based on the old lunar calendar.  The modern Christian Easter Festival derived from the original name of the month.   It is always the first Sun's Day after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox.  Formerly the full moon represented the "pregnant" phrase of Eostre passing into the fertile season. The Christian festival wasn't called Easter until the Goddess's name was given to it in the late Middle Ages. The Irish observed Easter on a different date from that of the Roman church, probably the original date of the festival of Eostre, until the Roman calendar was imposed on us in 632 A.D.



Eostra and the Hare 
The Celts believed that t the hare was sacred to the White Goddess - the Earth Mother - and as such was considered to be a royal animal. It represented love, fertility and growth and was associated with the moon, dawn,death, redemption and resurrection


The moon was perhaps the most powerful symbol of birth, growth, reproduction, death and rebirth. 
The hare was endowed with similar earth-bound powers. It was believed that Eostre changed into a hare at the full Moon.



Man has for centuries respected, even feared the hare because of its perceived powers of solitude and remoteness. Active at night, symbolic of the intuitive, and the fickleness of the Moon, the hare was an emblem of unpredictability.




Like the Moon, which always changes places in the sky, hares were full of mystery and contradictions. In Celtic Myth the Celtic warrior Oisin hunted a hare and wounded it in the leg, forcing it to seek refuge in a clump of bushes. When Oisin followed it he found a door leading into the ground and he eventually emerged into a huge hall where he found a beautiful young woman sitting on a throne bleeding from a wound in her leg.
The transmigration of the soul is clearly seen in Celtic lore such as this.


Throughout the world, there are long-spoken tales of hares; from the Americas to the Far East, from Africa to Europe, the hare is embedded in the folk myths of our ancestors.



 It is associated in mythology with the Moon, the celestial skies and the Sun, with fertility, the dawn, cunning and bravery. There is evidence of hare mythology in ancient pottery, coins, seals, and hieroglyphics and in oral history. (In Egypt the hare symbolised the very essence of life itself:

 The hieroglyphic 'Wn', depicting a hare on top of a single blue-green ripple, means 'to exist'. 







Europe

Many European gods and goddesses are associated with hares:
·         Hittavainen (or Hittauanin) is the Karelian god of hares and hare-hunting
·         The hare is often depicted as a companion to Cupid and as an attribute of Aphrodite/Venus, being associated with fertility and love
·         Holda (or Herke, Harfer) of Teutonic mythology, was followed by a train of hares carrying torches
·         The Norse goddess Freyja had hare attendants
·         In Britain the hare was sacred to the moon goddess Andraste
·         The hare is associated with the Celtic goddess Cerridwen
·         Kaltes is a Moon goddess venerated by the Ugric people of western Siberia. She was a shape-shifter and often manifested as a hare
 In earliest times killing and eating the hare was taboo. In Kerry, Ireland, it is said that eating a hare was like eating your grandmother ! 





Wednesday, March 23, 2016

"IMAGINE" April 17th to May 14th An exhibition of paintings by Trudi Doyle in the Courthouse Art Centre Tinahely

IMAGINE  ….. An exhibition of paintings by Trudi Doyle

The following information  currently  appears  on the "Whats on " Visual art page of The Courthouse Art Centre
courthousearts.ie/whats-on/visual-art/


Artist Trudi Doyle returns to show her paintings at the Courthouse Arts for the third time.   Trudi was the first artist to show in the Courthouse when it opened in 1996. This exhibition offers much to feed the imagination and is an opportunity to view her original, intriguing and beautiful paintings.

Still working on the last piece 

Detail from "Cocoon "


"Eostra Holds the Moon" SOLD



 Trudi’s art has a distinct style and quality: imagination is the primary source for her work, 
Many images are offered to the viewer to interpret as they may. Take her large “Tree of Life" painting in acrylic on canvas for instance, one suspects a moral lesson but it is up to the viewer to decipher the puzzle.
                                                                            
Tree of Life 


Sea Dreaming  SOLD 

Trudi now lives and grew up surrounded by images of open skies, trees, fields , mountains, farmland and wildlife  which merge with remembered stories, and imagined scenarios to inform her artwork which has been described as thoughtful and surreal and certainly is both. 

She Ran with the Hunted
Birds and wildlife clearly penetrate her consciousness and resurface in her work.

Dream Journey 

Many of her images have qualities that defy analysis and which brings one back to view them again and again

To Sleep until Spring  (with Hedghog ) 

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Trudi works in watercolours, pastels, oils and acrylics.  Her pastels have a dreamlike quality using an individual iconography relating to childhood and part of the pleasure for the viewer resides in identifying the motifs and sources of inspiration.
Moon dance






Fly me to the Moon


My Red Bicycle
Sometimes her work is simply beautiful and celebratory like her garden paintings, interiors, flower paintings and her still life pieces which show as Prionsias O’Drisceoil, Arts Officer, once wrote of her work ”a reverence for the everyday artifact”.
"Fox Hunting in the sun" SOLD

Spring Daffodils 
Hare Stare  SOLD 
Cluster of Wild Poppies 
Harldstown Dolmen 


Wicklow Landscape with Thorn Tree  


Trudi  is a contemporary artist from Hacketstown, Co Carlow now living in Crecrin, Ballyconnell on the Carlow Wicklow border and working from her studio there..
 










Trudi’ work has been exhibited widely both in Ireland, Europe and USA and pieces are held in many corporate and public collections as well as by private individuals throughout the world (including Oscar winner Ben Kingsley)."

PRICE LIST 

Acrylics on Canvas
 1. My Summer Garden         ------------  €2,400
 2.Cocoon ( Box Canvas ) --------------   €3,000
 3. Tree of Life              -------------------  €2,400
 4. Nature Whispers her Wisdom -----    €2,400
 5.The Yellow Kite          ---------€480    SOLD
 6. Moon Bather          --------------   ----- €480
 7. Eostra Holds the Moon        ---€1200--SOLD
 8  Noah's Ark,After the Flood     -----   €1,200
 9. Sea Dreaming                -------- --- € 700  
10. She Ran with the Hunted  ------------ €600
11. Dream Journey        -------------------- €600
12.Whispers from the Future  ------ ------    €1,000.
13 Pink Sunset, Eagle Hill   ------------- -€400
14.Artemis and the Wren     -------------   €360
15 .To SleepUntil Spring--------    €480SOLD
 16. Solitary Night Owl     ---------          €500
17 Everyone Goes Away        -------------   €160

18Season of Mists         ------------------ €160

19.Child Of the Universe ----------€180 SOLD 


20 Fox Alert                    ----------€800 SOLD 
1.Summer Morning      ----  Oils ------  €1200

Watercolour

22.Sunflowers and Poppies --------------- €540
23 Ducks &Sunflowers     ------ --------  €540

24"Good Drying Out ! " ------ ------ ---   €220

25 The Hare Remembers Too  ---------- -€450

26.Haroldstown Dolmen ---------- ------ € 180  

27. Fox hunting in the Sun       -------  SOLD
28 Bouquet of Daffodils    -------------    €450
29 Ravens Wood         ------------------.  €480
30 Cluster of Poppies        ------------ -- €480
31 Hawthorn Winter          ----------       €480
32 Hare Stare                --------  -----  SOLD
33 Gateway  to the Harvest  ----------     €450
34 Wicklow Landscape with Thorn tree -€450
35. My Red Bicycle    ------------------      €450
Pastels
36. Flying with an Angel    ------------  €800
37. Moondance      ----------------- ---    €800
38. The Rescue      ----------------------   €480
39 Fly me to the Moon       ----- -------- €450

“Art for me is a visual diary of the imagination “ Trudi Doyle