Culture is created by the stories we tell about ourselves. I noticed early in life how women were often missing from stories, or, when they were present, were submissive, feeble or seductive, often silent extensions of men. Unable to fit myself into this mythology of compliance and exclusion, I sought to find myself in stories from antiquity, discovering a love for elaborately illustrated books of fairytales and regional folklore. Growing up at the edge of a 20-acre forest gave my imagination free rein, where I often sketched and wrote sitting on the bare earth with my back against a tree; my love for nature—for trees especially—was born there.

Crucially impacted by Merlin Stone’s seminal work, When God Was A Woman in my early twenties, I discovered the ancient, anonymous artwork of our ancestors, rife with idealized, abstracted images of women, leading me into a forgotten world of autonomous, magical, powerful creatures intrinsically tied to the cycles of the natural world. In the stories I grew up loving, these female beings taught me how to live, how to preserve an essential knowing amidst the dominator model of patriarchy. An intersection between feminism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism/colonialism has begun pervading all intellectual sectors as our existing systems are breaking down; this is where I position my own work. While some contemporary feminist artists create their works through a historical interventionist lens, I reach into pre-history, especially that of the Neolithic British Isles, to resurrect their wisdom so applicable to our modern predicament.

I am an artist, an art teacher, a spiritual coach, yoga, meditation & voice teacher, and tree guardian. You can access my coaching or teaching remotely from anywhere in the world by emailing me at halli@hallibourne.com.