“the traditional beliefs, customs and stories of a community, passed through the generations by word of mouth”

One of the reasons for my research on this topic is my own fascination for the powers of the natural world, and how people though many generations have honoured and gestured to natures forces in the form of ritual and tradition.  My own art practice has its roots in the natural world which are mixed with events that could happen in the world of horror or science fiction.

My father used to travel around the UK a lot for work when I was a child; Scotland being one of the favoured places.  He would always come home with keepsakes and artefacts which were part of local tradition or belief of the area visited; one of these artefacts being the “Corn Dolly”.  This item has its origin in pagan rituals, and therefore comes with a fable about the meaning and significance attached to it, effectively bringing it to life and giving it a history.  The fable of the Corn Dolly tells of how it was thought that the harvest spirit lived in the corn and during the August harvest, in order not to anger the spirit, the final sheaf of corn was woven into a woman’s form and honoured at the harvest supper to pacify her. The Dolly would be put into the first furrow of the springtime harvest.

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These stories, tinged with a blend of integrity, historic reference and ritual, can create a fine line between fascination and fear.  It is for me ,that this fine line becomes a place where my artwork develops; somewhere between fact and fiction, reality and myth, believability but with element of disbelief.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing ways that folklore is explored in fiction is through horror in movies such as The Wicker Man (1973) . The combination of a remote setting, local tradition, ritual and a general consensus that the local population have homogenous mentality makes it terrifying and works to relay the unfolding belief systems indigenous to the people of the island.  The tension between the outsider and outwardly genteel insider mob is a place where fear for engrained belief systems becomes a rich breeding ground.

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While the rituals and stories of folklore played out in horror usually result in a grisly end, quirky and eccentric beliefs systems are common in the tradition of folklore in rural history. As the natural world dictates the cycles of the seasons, the harvesting of crops clearly marks the changing of these seasons, and Pagan festivities honour these changes.  This relationship between the natural world and the people relying on the laws of nature to survive and grow make an interesting power dynamic, with nature being something which needs to be acknowledged and respected.  It is this power balance that interests me the most and how this can easily be shifted to alter the dynamics of the natural world.

In these challenging times we are all facing at the current moment, we can have a greater understanding of how fables originated in rural areas with people being afraid of angering mother nature lest she wreak havoc on the earth, and hence destroying the way of life that was known.