Creating female connections to access our higher self.

This month I had the absolute pleasure of meeting full time Mum and artist Charlie Russell. Since moving to Margate I had admired Charlie’s work from afar and when I started The Gate I had no choice but to try my luck to see if I could meet with her. Charlie is a very private person and I feel very honoured that we could share so much with each other.

Charlie welcomed me into her home and studio which was bursting with life and her artistic process. I wanted to delve into our topic this month of art as a way of accessing our higher self and Charlie was a fascinating person to speak to. We discussed so many different subjects to the point where by the end we thought a podcast may be the best route for these talks!

Charlie makes the most unique ceramic goddess sculptures using her life experience as the catalyst to create. I saw them in Urchin Wines, Margate and immediately fell in love with how they all made me feel and appeared to be part of some secret female tribe I was yet to become a member of.

We had tea and started chatting like we had been friends for much longer than 5 minutes, we talked about The Gate and what it could mean to people moving forward, we talked about how sharing can be scary sometimes and how in fact Charlie has wanted to message me after reading last months interview with Amie. I explained how my healing process had evolved and how lucky I felt to be meeting more people like Charlie who were grounded in reality yet pursuing a life of discovery in unique ways.

Sam: “What was early life like? And when did you start the access your creative self?”

Charlie: “ Goodness Im not sure how much I should share around that subject! For now lets just say I had a strange childhood, we moved around a lot so I always felt rather isolated from long term friendships and family.”

“We were not given typical toys to play with when we were small and we were encouraged to make everything we wanted to engage with, so you may say art and creativity was with me from the very start. I was painfully shy at school, I chose to study art but didn’t not like my art teacher so then left any sort of artist pursuits until I was about 20.”

“I think thats when I first noticed cycles and still remain fascinated to them to this day, picking things up and putting them down again, our cycles as women, cycles of life and experiences. My art today has its own cycles in fact, usually from start to finish taking a month.”

Sam: “It’s so true, how simple encounters or choices make not too much sense and POW! All of a sudden you have taken yourself exactly where you need to be.”

Charlie: “Our relationship with objects has always been a topic in my work, I observe our choices as women around objects, how sometimes you just pick something up for no reason at all but something inside knows it will have power or value to you down the line.”

“That and our relationships with other women. Even from early life watching my Mother navigate her life and relationships, watching my own actions through my experiences and now carving my own relationship with my daughter.”

We talked about our very similar turbulent or lets say challenging relationships with our Mothers and how much that can affect us as children and now as adults. We talked about healing trauma from those stages in our lives and how we are both trying to be the last in the chain and not let anything but joy pass onto the next generation.

Sam: “I immediately connected with your work, a fan you can say! I wanted to know what do they mean to you?”

Charlie: “I think we make what we need, we make what we are. They are a safe object to put your beliefs on. I started making them when I got my heart broken, so it’s interesting to me as a lot of people think they are cute!”

“To me they are a family of their own, a network of connected female objects which when they are brought to gifted to someone stay connected. I absolutely cherish the female relationships in my life, they are the most important things to me.”

Sam: “Your work is so unique and powerful that you would never know they came out of heartbreak. I think they all look really brave and regal! I think you can go one of two ways when trauma happens, I remember thinking there wasn’t much point to doing anything as I was just going to die all of sudden like my mum did. You on the other hand seemed to have taken a phoenix from the ashes approach! Whats your view on trauma and creating?”

Charlie: “I really do believe in using trauma or pain to create new and beautiful things. I have always used it as a gift, within the year before I started making the women I had three major losses in my life and then after working with different materials and in a community space all of a sudden the goddess’ appeared I started creating them and haven’t stopped since. I definitely see now I used that pain as as a starting point.”

Sam: “When everything happened do you think you used your art as a coping mechanism or a salvation even?”

Charlie: “I think when you feel pain in your waking life then the pain of making something and someone saying its shit really does not matter anymore! That is something that used to worry me a lot, what others thought, I was also just painfully shy about what I did which seems silly now.”

We both reflected on the fear of putting yourself out there, finding your path and building confidence after a loss. 

Sam: “Your work to me seems so established and like its been the thing you have been doing your whole life, how long did intake for you to find your flow with it?”

Charlie: “It certainly has been a journey! For a long time I just made for myself, all the while never thinking It was good enough. I was making and making and not ever thinking that people would want to buy it!”

“Something I realised was making made me feel like I was a child again and for me that made it feel like my art was not an adult pursuit. Also something that blocked my flow was when I was about 28 I had a big attack of anxiety and it lasted almost 10 years!”

Sam: “And now in your new life in your 40’s everything seems so joyful an loving, that certainly comes through to me with your art. What do the sculptures mean to you now?”

Charlie: “I really don’t feel like they are mine! It’s like they are a family. Through making the women I have enjoyed learning about the history of people making things and creating things for specific reasons. Centuries of tribes or individuals within those tribes making just one thing, I think my women are manifestation of that.”

We talked about how we all used to live in smaller communities, how these days we are in fact all rather insular compared to the support of your tribe that was in your house everyday or on your doorstep. 

Sam: “And what do you hope the sculptures mean to the people that see them, hold them, buy them?”

Charlie: “I want people to give them their own meaning to keep or give to others. I think that objects hold so much energy and we as humans give these objects energy so all the women will have their own energy when gifted or received. If someone gives something to you then you will always think of them when you use it or see it. I love the idea that if you can’t be with your friends, your circle of female support then you can have something close to you that represents that person or holds their energy.”

I nearly teared up thinking about all my girlfriends around the world I cannot be with everyday and immediately wanted to run into Charlie’s studio to pick up 5 and get them in the post to my tribe asap. 

Sam: “What’s happening inside when you are working? In regards to your thought process and sense of self?”

Charlie: “When I’m making I’m the most myself I can be, I like to have the same song running over and over. It also depends where I am in my cycle, some weeks I am really creative and everything just works, all their little faces and colours are just as they should be and some weeks its not as easy.”

We laughed and reflected on how different we can feel one day to the next. I wandered if Charlie’s art felt therapeutic or if there were other things she did to relax. 

Sam: “Do you have any techniques to quiet your mind? Outside of your art?”

Charlie: “I have started using the headspace app, it’s been really great to get out of my head more. I think with therapy in general you need to do a physical therapy too. Think my making is a type of energetic therapy for myself also.”

Energy healing has been a huge help to me so we talked about how much sense it makes to combine talk therapy and energetic healing of some sort into your practice. I told Charlie about my personal journey to finding confidence in my own ideas and also starting to even pick up a paintbrush. 

Sam: “What advice would you give someone with a lack of confidence in their creative ability? Or even a lack of confidence to even start?”

Charlie: “I think the thing that you find hardest to do, is the thing you really need to do!”

“I would say the longer you spend being afraid of it the more time will be wasted. I am still afraid! Every time I start a new idea I think god can I actually do this!? I see that fear and push on through, the time I waste is now minutes rather than years.”

After our first hour and a half I finally get round to asking Charlie about this months topic! 

Sam: “Do you think we can we use art as a way of accessing our higher self?”

Charlie: “Yes! My front brain is always churning and yes that same bit is not always aware of what’s happening behind the scenes. If I need to make a decision on something or want to know how I feel about an event its usually takes me a week to know how I actually feel about it.”

“When I’m making I am busying that part of myself and I think some real things happen when I’m not actually focusing on them. I also guess I’m meditating in some way on each sculptures, studying each edge, each shape and that feels spiritual in a way.”

Sam: “What do you believe in?”

Charlie winced at how corny what we believe in can sound when said out loud, we discussed how in fact its such an interesting thing for me to hear, how mainstream religion has not been something we could personally connect to. 

Charlie: “I believe in love not just in relationship love but that feeling that humans can get and give to each other, that to me is a very healing thing. I believe we are all connected by energy, the more safe we feel and the more love we feel I think that what helps expand our consciousness and understanding.”

And as if I didn’t already want to be part of Charlie’s tribe what she believed in resonated with me so much and she closed with this. 

“I think we are an organism, all made of one thing but we have no idea that we are! I read once about this mushroom, well it was miles and miles of mushrooms they were just all part of the same thing. I think we are just one mushroom.”

This meeting with Charlie was something very special to me and I learnt afterwards had an effect on Charlie also. The simple act of  talking and exploring her own process gave her some new clarity around her journey and I honestly couldn’t hope for anything more for The Gate.

Interview for The Gate. Instagram @the.gate___ Site: https://the-gate.online/about-contact/

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