Sacred Place

"Sacred Women's Rock" - (acrylic, oil, newspaper) LC 1999

I painted this picture at the Sacred Aboriginal Women's Rock in the Dandenong Ranges a few years ago. It's marked on the signs and maps with a white-fella name, but the locals know what it really is. And some of them know the energy and power of the place. The Women's Rock is a broad and nurturing expanse of rock on which one or many people can sit peacefully or lie in the sun and be at one with nature for a little while. It's a place to relax and unwind and know that everything is as it is meant to be. Just below is the Man's Rock; a much smaller shaft of stone protruding abruptly from the ground and just big enough for one person to sit on the top. Sit here if you need to fill yourself up with energy to attack the day.

WHY IS THERE NO ROCK IN MY PAINTING OF THE ROCK?
Before you go down to sit on the rocks, ask permission from the spirits of the place. If they say no, don't go. If you think it's beneath you to ask permission from the Spirit of the place before entering the area, don't go. in the past, we wouldn't have been allowed to go anyway. I had been going to the rocks daily for some time before i attempted to paint them. I needed to know I was accepted by them and I'm sure that I was. But going to sit on sacred rocks is a whole different thing to painting them. i have to go deep into a thing to paint it, and although I could feel that the rock was sacred, and I could sit on it and feel it's energy... back then I don't think I was ready to go deep into that sacred place, and I think the rock knew it.

I started several different paintings of the rock and each time I ended up painting only the trees around it. It wasn't that I couldn't have forced myself to paint the rock itself, it's just that i gravitated towards the trees. The new energy of the trees was easier to deal with than the old energy of the rock which contains so much memory of that place and of all the people who have come there for thousands of years. We feel the memory of places and things. This is why we are drawn to old growth trees which have avoided the axe for hundreds of years. They contain a memory and a power that we can feel and connect with. The big old companion trees to this rock had been cut down by the white settlers over 150 years ago for the wood and also to allow people to see the view. The whole mountain was dairy farmed and treeless. It wasn't until the 1920's and 30's that the farms were pushed out and the trees began to grow again. That's why all the trees on the Dandenong Ranges are the same height, they all started growing at the same time about 80 years ago. And that's how much memory the trees that have grown back up around the rock have. But the Sacred Rock is hundreds of thousands of years old and holds all of the memory of that place.

At the time, I thought the rock was saying to me, "You're not allowed to paint me".
Now I think it was saying, "How about painting the trees? They're nice."
And they were, but now it's time to go back and add the bottom bit to that picha.