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Sophie Mason is an artist and gardener exploring our relationship with the natural world.

Landscape (London, Autumn)

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#blanket

Particularly excited to grow my own chamomile this year. Really, an extra feeling of delicious calm to grow the plant and then pick the flowers fresh for tea.
They were really easy to grow, I recommend it!
As we head into autumn feeling very grateful for this seasons bounty.

——
How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And doesn't care about careers
And exigencies never fears.
Whose coat of elemental brown
A passing universe put on,
And independent as the sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute decree
In casual simplicity. ~~~~
I wanted to share Emily Dickinson’s poem, one of my favourites. I think it could be seen as animist thought at its most simple and straightforward.

Every thing, every being, has its own particular way of existing within the world. Its own particular way of communicating. Perhaps even its own particular thing to impart. We just have to listen. ~~~
When we start to listen magic abounds. Stones are without fear; river water sings; dragonflies share winged thoughts in flight. The debris falls from our eyes and we see the multiplicity of the world. The vibrancy and reciprocity in every thing around us, whether it’s a weed in concrete or ancient woodland.
As we try to haul our consumer addled minds into a more regenerative way of being I really do think this is meaningful. ~~~
I heard a story about a teacher and a pupil sitting on a mountain looking down into a valley. The teacher said to the pupil ‘If you could really see what is in front of you, you would fall to your knees in tears from the beauty of it all.’ I think I’m starting to understand this! The intricate harmony and interconnectedness of our ecosystems are mostly beyond our comprehension these days but when we start to reanimate the world, magic and wonder become a part of our daily life. (Sorry Emily Dickinson for perhaps over blowing your original meaning!?)

Two blanket WIP, one dyed with avocado and iron and the other dyed with oak galls and iron. ~~
These are slightly different to the last works in that they have taken a slow journey this summer through the mountains and lakes of the Navarra, up into the dunes and forests of the West coast of France, into the green tangle of Brittany and across to the Oxford countryside of great old oaks and blackberries. As always I’m astonished at the marks they have taken on along the way. ~~
It has been a lovely way to root deeper into landscapes that one essentially passes through as a tourist. Slowing down and watching the intimate goings on between bark and fly and grass, waters and sky and bird. ~~
It has reminded me of that Rilke poem, ‘Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner -- what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.’ #blanket