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In Kaye Dixon’s current body of work, Bone Women, is reimagined through the alchemy of alternative printing processes.
“I particularly enjoyed Kaye Dixon’s Bone Women series. She combined sculpture, painting, digital photography, and cyanotype printing to ‘re-member’ her journey home; the long journey to find her feminine power buried in the depth of her soul. Her bone women are sailing and ‘re-membering’ the times when there was an intrinsic connection between all living things.”
– Brian Rope. Into The Blue – a Celebration of the Cyanotype Print explores an age-old technique. Canberra Times, 2021
The building of the boats, carrying the Bone Women, started in 2018 and I imagined them sailing over the ocean under the starry skies. In this body of work, this desire has been achieved through painting, photography, and the alchemy of cyanotype. Bone Women remind us to re-member to journey home to the magic and medicine deep inside the soul of the feminine.
This is a journey based on the way of the Feminine. Using intuitive wisdom and navigating by the stars over the seas to find new land; where the sacredness of Mother Earth, the mysteries of the universe and the wild feminine is revered. The bones hold lost and half- forgotten memories of Wild Woman. It is her connection to wildish nature that carries stories, dreams, words, and song. Wild Woman listens to what is seen and unseen, she whispers from our night dreams.
Also Included are poems written in response to the images from writers in Australia and Ireland.
Kaye Dixon
“When we assert intuition, we are therefore like the starry night; we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes”
In Autumn, the Pleiades (seven sisters) are low in the sky, their rising from the horizon heralds the start of the cold. Bone Women re-member the seven sisters are navigational beacons; moving through space together surrounded by wisps of dust and gas clouds.
As a girl, connected to my instinctual wildish senses, I crawled out my bedroom window in the stealth of the night to meet friends on the banks of the Brisbane River. Those night skies are etched in my memory. I grew up having wild nature to explore and this seed pod is from that river.
My connection with my mother was through nature.
The Bone Women are sailing, re-membering the Celtic lands where Mother earth was held in reverence. They believe Gods and Goddesses rest in the stars. The sail, made from Shifu threads, weave stories together from ancient lands in both hemispheres.
…beneath the diaphragm
(sister seas, begotten of riven debris) unfossilised remains teem with life the Job—to sow, not want
Without Her, I am nothing This is what we do…
Spine holds memories.
I collected from nearby trees and added sails.
The feel, touch, texture of fabric connects me to the feminine. The bones come from roadkill outside my property.
Bone Woman is sailing and re-membering that the moon cycle holds the mystery of life. She sails, listening to her soul talk, her inner vision showing her the way. She is wild nature, and her bones are the source of instinct and knowing.
In a Greek version of the Pleiades myth the seven sisters were companions to Artemis, goddess of hunting, the wilderness, and wild animals. Besides killing game, she also protected it. She supervised waters and lush wild growth; her dancing was wild.
In ancient Greece, Hydra was the female water snake. Of the night sky constellations Hydra is the largest and lies alongside the Milky Way. It is easiest to find in Autumn. The fish is a carp, an introduced species, that I found at a Cairn Curran reservoir. The night sky photograph was taken at the same location.
When I was forming the bones I called this boat, the Mary Boat. The sail is eco dyed with eucalyptus leaves and the oars are rose petals and stems pressed after my father’s funeral. The farmer next door helped me make the anchor, his large hands used to twisting and weaving with wire.
In Draco the Dragon, the first in a series of three (Draco, Bear, Emu) the Bone Women are sailing from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere. For many people in the Northern hem- isphere, the constellation Draco never disappears below the horizon. The Bone Women remember the wisdom of wayfinding handed down by the ancestors and held in the stars. They observe the stars, the birds, the ocean swells, and the wind patterns.
During late summer in the southern parts of Australia the Milky Way shimmers in the night sky. As the seasons change, the constellations turn guiding us and connecting us to the emus’ lifecycle. Indigenous people knew when to collect emu eggs and when to leave them to hatch. The photograph of the Milky Way was taken from my back hill.
The infinity of stars The finitude of our earth
Endless tears 5
The kangaroo grass grows in our back paddock. I love coming across all the patches of it and the magic of its beautiful form. Its seeds are eaten by birds and its leaves used for nesting. Bone Women’s hair comes from our horses.
“The moon has gone the Pleiades gone
In the dead of the night Time passes on”
Sailing on a flood of tears toward the earth’s tipping point – The wild bone woman is whispering
Night’s infinity. 7
In Under the Southern Cross, the brown tones of ziatype under the blue of cyanotype mirror the as above, so below of earth and sky.
Bone dry, a flood of tears, the native grasses were here long before we landed.8
The image ‘The Dry’ was inspired by the movie of the same name, which shows the dry continent that we inhabit. The grassland bird population is endangered. Birds are messengers of the Gods and deserve reverence.
In our bones there is stardust. The wild woman, the bone women remind us that we do not have dominion over nature, we are of nature. As we navigate our journeys, we will re-member and fall gracefully into our wild ness.
Bone women re-member when they lived in harmony with the land; when humans, animals and plants were temples of living spirits.
Australia has the fastest species extinction rate on the planet. We need to re-member.
Coming home from yoga on dark evenings I was often rewarded with a sighting of the Tawny Frogmouth in our driveway. The Tawny Frogmouth is the keeper of secrets as she flies in the night skies, holding the records and wisdom of our ancestors. One day she was roadkill.
“My tear-stained eyes Open now to see Your enemy and mine Is – civilized me”