This work was inspired by the many beautiful tombstones in Highgate Cemetary, London. The painting was built up with many ‘vignettes’; Isolated images painted into the lower layers to symbolize the thousands of stories buried amongst the ivy and the sculpture.

A hunter unfortunate enough to see the Goddess Artemis bathing. As punishment, she transformed him into a stag and he was hunted down and killed by his own hounds.
 

GillaGréine, or Grian, is the name associated with a Celtic sun goddess. Some link her name with ‘grain’ suggesting she was also a corn deity: the sun being very important to the cultivation of this crop. 

Gila Gráinne was said to have been part divine and part human. She drowned herself in Lough Grainey (which took her name) unable to settle in the world of men. Her body was recovered and buried at Tuamgraney – the Tomb of Gréine.

Lugh Lamhfada: Lugh was a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann. He is portrayed as a youthful warrior hero, a king and saviour. He is associated with skill, crafts and the arts, as well as with oaths, truth and the law. He is sometimes interpreted as a sun god, a storm god or a sky god. In Ireland, Lugh is also associated with the harvest festival of Lughnasadh, which is named after him.

"Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humorously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered." - The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Nephilim: The offspring of the ‘Sons of God’ (Angels) and the ‘Daughters of men’ (Human women) mentioned in Genesis 6:4 & Numbers 13:33. Possibly meaning ‘Giants’ or ‘Ones who have fallen’.
 

Part 1 of a triptych depicting the abduction of Persephone. The second will feature the tale of her mother’s grief Demeter), and finally the third will document her ascension to the throne in the underworld.

Prints will be available shortly.

A symbol of the Earth Spirit as an angelic being cradling the planet.

Lilith is strongly linked with the myth told in Genesis and the temptation of Adam and Eve, but she is also believed to have been the first wife of Adam.

Abrahamic religions aside, originally the Lili were thought to be wind spirits that haunted the desert, eventually developing to embody the independent feminine spirit or Matriarch that the Patriachal religions cast as a demon or evil spirit. A fear of women making their own choices! Anyway - really enjoyed working with her on this one!

Siren: In Greek mythology, the Sirens were dangerous creatures, who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. Roman poets placed them on some small islands called Sirenum scopuli. All such locations were surrounded by cliffs and rocks.

Blodeuwedd, meaning ‘Flower-Face’, was the mystically fashioned wife of Lleu Llaw Gyffes in Welsh mythology. Formed from the delicate spring flowers of broom, meadowsweet, and oak, by the magicians Math and Gwydion. Lleu’s mother, the goddess Arianrhod, had cruelly cursed him never to marry a mortal woman, which is why Blodeuwedd was magically created to provide Lleu with a wife. Blodeuwedd is one of central & saddest figures in the last of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. It is a very ancient Welsh tale, which may actually refer to the coming of the summer.

Sylph is a mythological spirit of the air. Originating in the 16th century works of Paracelsus, who described sylphs as invisible beings of the air or air elementals.

Selkies are mythical creatures that live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land for a time. They might take a human husband but are always yearning to return to the sea. This could be delayed if the husband hid her sealskin.

An ancient Greek Goddess know as ‘Artemis of the wild-land, mistress of animals.’ She was the Hellenic goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, childbirth, virginity and the protector of young girls, bringing and relieving disease in women; she was often depicted as a huntress, carrying with her a bow and arrows. The deer, the cypress and the moon were all sacred to Artemis.

These were the early Druids, priests or medicine men of these Western Isles.  They would seek information and advice from the gods through altered states of awareness. The many stone circles and wedge tombs around Ireland were most likely built by these early people.

A symbolic drawing of our search for divinity within, through introspection and contemplation.

Ellen is a little known European Goddess who may have been revered since Palaeolithic times. She has been termed ‘The Green Lady’, Consort of the ‘Green Man’, who’s carved foliate faces peek out at us from many old Churches. Ellen however can be discovered within what still remains of our once vast primordial forests & ancient woodlands. As the Horned Goddess she leads us back in time, towards the first trackways, following the migratory paths of the reindeer, and later, the forest paths of the red deer. Although her sacred pathways can be traced back to the primitive tracks of both the Reindeer and the Elk, she is also a guardian of mans prehistoric footways. She is especially concerned with the balance of energies within the earth, the cycles of nature & the fertility of the land itself. Symbolic of the spirit of nature, she appears as an antlered female, something usually only found within the reindeer. In Bulgarian, severen elen actually translates as reindeer. Ellen is also a patron of roads and the sacred gateways between the worlds.

One of many ithyphallic male companions of Dionysus, drawn to wine, women, song and music! A spirit that enjoyed all earthly pleasures.

In Greek mythology Scylla was a monster that lived on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite her counterpart Charybdis. Scylla made her first appearance in Homer's Odyssey, where Odysseus and his crew encounter her and Charybdis on their travels. Later myth gave her an origin story as a beautiful nymph who gets turned into a monster, with the torso of a woman and the lower half of ravenous dogs.
 

Arwen Undómiel (Evenstar), from J R R Tolkein’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ played by Liv Tyler in Peter Jacksons adaption. : (sketch)

Horns being a symbol of divinity, but perhaps also a reference to that part of us where, as Terry Pratchett puts it: ‘the falling angel meets the rising ape’.

Based on the idea of the Minoan Crete ritual dance.