Sensual, evocative, feminine. These are some of the first words that surface to describe Rose Drummond’s work. Archetypal goddesses hum songs of grieving and joy. Guardians and guides peer out from the veil, showing their presence, promising their protection. Illustrative landscapes and plant forms support and adorn the figures. Left with a feeling that the ancestors are messaging us through Rose’s use of line, pattern, earth tones, and imperfect symmetry, I feel less alone. Talking with Rose about her rich and deep creative process leaves me feeling hopeful that spirit is still alive and well in studios littered across this vast globe.
(Rose) resides in the Pacific Northwest where she listens deeply to the land, and learns from it. Her work stems from the desire to seek comfort in the Earth, and to create guardians and guides to watch over us in these wild times. When she’s not painting, Rose is stewarding land through organic farming and sustainability practices.
Drummond’s work is both haunting and soothing. Using watercolors, inks, and paint pens on paper and wood surfaces, her distinct illustrative imagery flows like water over stone. Gentle teals and blues highlight against warm pumpkins, ochre and rusts. Organic forms of fungi, wood grain, and waterways become background, body and adornment; figures shed tears that are waterfalls pouring off mountains, eyes birth feather lashes, and wrinkles contain a tree’s history. Crone-like figures speak of elders past, full of quiet knowing and constant presence. It’s as though each piece compresses time and space to allow the viewer to dip their fingers into the void.
The beauty of Rose’s work also lovingly opens a doorway into heavier realms of trauma and psyche. The artist stated that some pieces were created specifically to “entomb traumatic experiences”, and that by housing them this way, she can “come back and touch them when (she) wants to, rather than being overtaken by them”. A powerful and healing motive for art - to parse an experience from the physical body, encapsulate and honor it with a painting, and therefore allow it to become something that was both experienced by us, but is also other than us. Trauma might then become a transformative experience to be honored for its assistance in helping us become who we are today, rather than remain an experience that holds us in the past.
Lady Death (third image posted above) speaks to our culture’s relationship to death during the onset of the pandemic. As an immune-compromised person, Rose had ample opportunity to sit with their fear of death, as well as tap into the collective wave of fear that rolled over the globe as the pandemic was just beginning. Lady Death emerged as a response to that inquiry and became a gentle reminder that death is our companion in life - forever walking beside us and just as natural and beautiful as our birth. The crone’s deeply wrinkled hands are those of a grandmother who has fully touched life. They are hands that have held babies, nourished bellies, made sacred space, and worked. They are the hands that will one day receive us into the earth. Lady Death soothes over our fear of death, even when it was conjured from the exploration of it.
We’re With You (first image) and Upstream (second image) were both created from a deep emotional response to heavy and chaotic times. We’re With You was created from the deep loneliness Rose experienced during the height of the lockdowns. Conjuring connection from darkness; knowing you’re not alone, but unable to feel it. Taking time to feel into the energetic caresses of family, friends, and ancestors that are reaching out over time and space. Allowing the emotion of the experience to fall from the body and funneling it through the hands - through painting, holding, and offering. Upstream was created during the 2020 election cycle. A stressful time, the Warrior Guardian appears to be holding her breath, in that liminal space after the inhale, but before the exhale. Pausing in anticipation, but ready to act. For Rose, that time was also a time of grieving many struggling watersheds around her home. Weaving the medicine of the Salmon into the waters of life. Weaving fortitude and resiliency back into the land. Rose weaves her experiece into the larger struggles of these times.
Rose’s art is tender, wise, and evocative. It offers us a world in which we are tenderly and powerfully held by both the hands of the guardians and the artist who channels them. Thank you, Rose. I’m very glad to have met you.
See more of Rose’s work on her website and Instagram:
Images in the order they are posted:
We’re With You, watercolor and ink on paper, 2021
Upstream, watercolor and ink on paper, 2020
Lady Death, watercolor and ink on paper, 2020
Artist in studio with Being of the Desert, watercolor & micron on panel, 2020
If you enjoyed this article, and are curious about cultivating a healthier relationship to death, check out Stephen Jenkinson’s talk, Thoughts on Dying Well in a Death-Phobic Culture. Stephen’s perspectives on elderhood and death were part of the inspiration for Lady Death, and have a soothing effect on the soul.
Beautiful work, and words. Soulful and deep.