Waratah Hand Painted Silk Scarf
Serti Silk Painting by Alison Lee Cousland

The first waratah I painted on silk was on a scarf, commissioned by Maureen, a natural healer working with Dennis Stewart, who first introduced me to the healing powers of our Australian Native Flower Essences.

Maureen made her own Native Flower Essences and gave lectures on the transition of their healing properties by simply being in their vicinity and absorbing their vibrational energy as Australian indigenous people have always done instinctively. By simply looking at Maureen’s  slides of the Native Flowers, she believed that her viewers could absorb their healing vibration.

The revelation that this energy could be infused VISUALLY was  very new to me and the ‘floodgates of inspiration’ opened. My love of being in our Australian Bush with all our flora and fauna, my passion for art and my innate inclination towards natural healing could at last converge.

Silk was the obvious media for me to bring ‘life’ to visual impressions of our Native Flowers. Being technically adept at finely detailed serti silk painting was just the beginning. How to instill painting with the ‘healing essence’ of the flowers was to become my ten year challenge.

Seemed like the best way to start was to attune myself to a flower that I most resonated with: the waratah was the obvious choice.

The name ‘waratah’ means ’seen from afar’ and standing tall amongst the soft blue/green/greys of our Australian bush ’scrub’ a waratah in full bloom is a magnificent sight to see.

The formulators of Australian Bush Flower remedies, believe that the ‘essence’ of waratahs instill qualities of courage, strength and vitality. For me the waratah image also captures the spirit and lifeblood of Australia.

Maureen loved her scarf and I continued to paint several scarves with waratah motifs before designing the larger  waratah paintings and screens and ultimately my one and only, unique and never-to-be-repeated-again wall hanging.

Ally * Alison Lee Cousland

Email: private@riseall.com

Personal Twitter: http://twitter.com/Allyinspirit

Creative Muse Twitter: http://twitter.com/MyCreativeMuse

Blogs

Pathways to Abundant Living: http://riseall.com

Your Creative Muse: http://yourcreativemuse.com

Allyinspirit Internet Solutions Blog: http://allyinspirit.info

All Things Bright and Beautiful: http://budurl.com/AllThings

Miracle Mineral Solutions: http://miraclemineralsolutions.info

All Round Health and Healing: http://allroundhealthandhealing.com

Scarves * Serti Silk Paining * Alison Lee Cousland

After attending a single morning silk workshop the ‘inspiration floodgates’ opened * The world of silk art continued to expand as I experimented in isolation for months, in order  to ‘perfect’ my personal serti silk painting techniques.

The basic serti technique requires the design outlines to be drawn with a resist, so that the separately defined areas can then be painted with blends of colourfields, ranging from delicate ethereal hues to brilliant vibrancy.

My aim was to specialize in refining the serti line as well as the application of colour * Applying all my acquired fine art ‘skills’ of drawing and watercolor to this craft.

The serti technique is essentially the same regardless of the fabric weight, weave and thickness * But each fabric places different demands on the skills of the artist.

These first pieces were generously sized scarves/shawls/wraps: hand-painted on the finest Habutai silk with a glossy, almost satiny sheen and then on very fine georgette silk that has more of a matt sheen. Both drape softly although georgette tends to even more so.

After painting many such scarves I naturally ‘progressed’ onto other forms of wearable art. Then onto screens, wall panels, framed paintings and one unique hanging. Of course all silk paintings are unique (as distinct from silk screening) which makes this particular hanging, uniquely unique.

Unfortunately photographs can’t capture the glowing vibrancy of the silk itself or the ‘glitter’ of the gold serti. So please allow for the sheen of the silk when viewing the above samples of my first silk paintings.

Details of scarves: From the top left going clockwise:

1  Oriental Orchids on Silk Georgette

2. Magnolias on Habutai Silk

3. Waratah on Habutai Silk

4. Native Orchids Habutai Silk

Ally * Alison Lee Cousland

Email: private@riseall.com

Personal Twitter: http://twitter.com/Allyinspirit

Creative Muse Twitter: http://twitter.com/MyCreativeMuse

Blogs

Pathways to Abundant Living: http://riseall.com

Your Creative Muse: http://yourcreativemuse.com

Allyinspirit Internet Solutions Blog: http://allyinspirit.info

All Things Bright and Beautiful: http://budurl.com/AllThings

Miracle Mineral Solutions: http://miraclemineralsolutions.info

All Round Health and Healing: http://allroundhealthandhealing.com

Ideally I like to surround myself with people who have very positive attitudes about their direction in life and aspirations for their future. I particularly love sharing with people who are also not afraid to travel beyond the confines of the norm in their thinking and being.

I guess I’ve had the notion of escaping the norm ever since I can remember. As a child it seemed that whatever you wanted TO BE in life was inextricably bound to whatever ‘career’ you chose and I changed my budding ‘careers’ nearly every week.

Science always attracted me, wanting to know how everything in life and the universe worked. But my final criteria, at the age of about 18 was to have the ‘Personal Freedom’ to explore and follow my own ‘dreams’ which were still forever changing and my priority was never to be restricted by a 9 to 5 lifestyle. At that time I didn’t equate ‘Personal Freedom’ with ‘Financial Freedom’ and the only people within my ‘realm’ that seemed to be living life to the fullest were ‘The Artists.’

I graduated from Prahran CAE, Victoria with the Diploma of Art & Design * Majoring in painting. With an increasing interest in environmental art, I really valued the opportunity to assist Tom McCullough, Director of the Mildura Arts Centre during a Sculpturescape Triennial year.

In order to earn the essential ‘roof over my head’ I’ve been everything from an art teacher/professional artist to a gardener/waitress and along the way as an added interest studied various forms of natural healing modalities, eventually specializing in Polarity Therapy.

It seemed only natural to become immersed in the reciprocal relationship between art and healing and in my silk art work in particular I aimed at infusing the healing vibrations of the native bush plants/flowers into my paintings. At that time I was also making my own Australian bush flower essences. From there I moved into multi-media and photography and of course digital image-making. Still interweaving Art with Natural Healing * Instilling Healing into Art and Creative Energy into Healing.

For me  health and healing is ALL encompassing and involves far more than the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe. Although all these ingredients are vital for our overall survival, our total wellness is also dependent on our reactions and responses to people/animals/circumstances, the myriad of impressions we absorb and assimilate on a moment by moment basis and all the dynamics of our relationships with each other and all living creatures including the earth herself.

By Blog ’All Round Health and Healing’ aims to bring together my understanding of many different facets of our living that can play an essential role in the integration of the physical body with the emotions, mind and spirit, thus contributing towards becoming ‘A Complete Human Being.’

Somehow with the shift from working with visual imagery to on-line writing, I’ve re-discovered as it were, my love of writing * But I can at times be given to making up words. So forgive me if the Academic English isn’t always ‘Queens.’

 About this Avatar that I use at many of my blogs: I love natural law as exemplified in mathematics, nature and in indigenous handicrafts. I don’t begin to understand the higher mathematical/cosmic laws of the Crop Circles but I have responded to them visually and emotively ever since they were first sighted and incorporated them into a lot of my art. This little Avatar is one of my favorite Crop Circles and to me represents a harmonious convergence of energy.

Although my silk painting was exhibited widely, it couldn’t  be shown as an all-encompassing collection * Which this blog will now attempt to do.

Ally * Alison Lee Cousland

Email: private@riseall.com

Personal Twitter: http://twitter.com/Allyinspirit

Creative Muse Twitter: http://twitter.com/MyCreativeMuse

Blogs

Pathways to Abundant Living: http://riseall.com

Your Creative Muse: http://yourcreativemuse.com

Allyinspirit Internet Solutions Blog: http://allyinspirit.info

All Things Bright and Beautiful: http://budurl.com/AllThings

Miracle Mineral Solutions: http://miraclemineralsolutions.info

All Round Health and Healing: http://allroundhealthandhealing.com