2023 | Reflections – Alexi Francis

Posted on November 30, 2023 by Alexi — Leave a comment

A New Altered Sketchbook and Notebooks

I have a new altered sketchbook that I’ve called The Badger Wood. I’m back into woods and all the wonderful, intricate textures and details I love about them.

I wanted to work in a sketchbook this time as I didn’t want to have to stick extra paper into the book as I do with a hardbacked, secondhand book. I can see the appeal of using old books and the surprise of finding the magic of original papercut illustrations inside, but with this one it’s all a bit tidier.

As usual there are six illustrated pages each side of the central spread and as the title suggests, there are trees, badgers, a deer, lots of brambles etc as you go deeper into the book and into the wood.

The Badger Wood is available in my Etsy shop where you can also see a video and some inside pages of the book. It’s also now added to my website shop.

I’ve also created some new A5 notebooks using illustrations from my Goddesses of River, Sea and Moon book – Water Goddess Yemanja and Moon Goddess Hina – and another more recent illustration, Waiting for Rain.

Moon Goddess Hina A5 Notebook. Hina is a goddess of the Pacific islands like Tahiti. She is depicted here beating tapa tree bark into cloth.

Water Goddess Yemanja A5 Notebook. Yemanja is a goddess of rivers and the ocean. She originated in West Africa. Here she is depicted wearing a dress of seven skirts.

Each notebook has different coloured inside pages. Water Goddess Yemanja notebook has 80 light blue pages, Moon Goddess Hina notebook has 80 lilac pages and Waiting for Rain notebook has 80 cream inside pages. They’re also available in my Etsy shop.

I’m pleased to say that my Waiting for Rain illustration has been included in the lovely 2024 Earth Pathways Diary along with my Forest Angel picture:

I’ve had enquiries about possible art prints of these two images. Contact me if you’re interested in A4 prints or prints of anything else on the website.

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Posted on October 8, 2023October 8, 2023 by Alexi — Leave a comment

New Zine/Booklet

I’ve created a new zine/booklet titled ‘If You Are Lost You May Be Taken’. It’s different from my Night Wood booklet in some ways, although both have 16 highly detailed, illustrated pages of my pen and ink illustrations. It is an illustrated book version of a piece of writing that featured on the RTE Irish radio programme, Keynotes, a few years ago.

The piece was written as a sort of response to David Wagoner’s poem, Lost and loosely inspired by the myth of Daphne in Ovid’s Metamorphosis. I like to describe it as a strange, poetic tale from the forest, haunting and the stuff of dreams.

Pages from my If You Are Lost You May Be Taken zine.

The booklet/zine is now available to buy in my Etsy shop and soon on my website shop.

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Posted on September 15, 2023November 1, 2023 by Alexi — Leave a comment

A Woods Person, a Sea Person

I have moved. I have moved town and I am now even closer to the sea. To chalk cliffs, gulls, pebbles, the coast. It doesn’t call me, I am here. I try to belong. Something tells me I should belong. It says I used to belong. Once I was a sea person dreaming of selkies – all water and flow, the rush of the tide, mudflats, sand prints, seaweed. I had a small vision of myself as one with the water, decked in weeds or a ship with open sails caught in a seaward breeze. I daydreamed of the sunken, the deep, of shipwrecks.

But now, I’m not sure. I waver in the winds of uncertainty. If I was once a sea person, I guess I still am, but I can’t quite access that part of me right now, even though I try.

I am here, witnessing. The sea is here, is there, the blue wash, the forever waters, so close. But I am awkward in its presence. Gleaming white rock looks at me as I shyly behold it. I should belong, chalk woman that I am. And yet my dreams are still with the trees, with the wild wanderings of woodland. I am missing the deep, wooded places, the deep, green, lush spaces in dappled sunlight. And deer.

The sea I once was, now I am the land, desired by earth, dust, the intimacy of vegetation, of leaves. I pine for the scent of chlorophyll, for the moment I notice a dronefly caught hovering in a shaft of sunlight, memories of fungal gloom, the wood at dusk.

And the sea – there – it washes on forever. How can one contain forever? How can one contain the sea…

And now I have a faint desire to refind that missing sea fragment of myself. I can contain the trees, the forest, in books; but I cannot contain, cannot fathom the sea.

It has returned – as ideas, desires, dreams often do in some future time. So often these dreams come once the desire has passed in my life and I have moved on and it doesn’t matter any more. Things happen so slowly. I fear to dream because in decades time the Summoning, the Reckoning, when dreams or desires become manifest. But oh, so late. I fear the wheels turn too slowly, planets circle too distantly and I barely cast a glance at a past desire, which is now just a cinder. I wish it wasn’t so – and yet, better that dreams come true, become manifest, than nightmares. I will not think of those.

Tonight is the day past the Dark Moon. I’ll cast my thoughts to a star studded sky hanging over my sea, as it is now my sea. It is here and it is there, so close. I am here and almost there with it, trying to piece together that fragment of me that has now past and is hidden, caught within the forests in my mind, but, hopefully, not lost.

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Posted on July 20, 2023 by Alexi — Leave a comment

Escaping to Temperate Rainforest

At the end of June we went down to south Devon where we stayed at the truly lovely Hearth Retreat in their little Apple Wagon.

It was so peaceful, roaming the fields and woods I was in my element. I just happened to be reading The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole – as I am a lover of all rainforests – so it seemed a good idea to visit some temperate rainforest in East Dartmoor National Par, as mentioned in the book.

The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole

Temperate – or Atlantic/Celtic rainforest as it is also called – is characterised by trees, often sessile oaks, bearing all sorts of epiphytes – polypody ferns, lichens, mosses, pennywort. The trees literally drip with verdant epiphytic life. Like all rainforests they receive a lot of rainfall that creates rich, moist, tangled layers of lush vegetation that I find incredibly beautiful in dappled sunlight.

We’ve visited smaller patches of rainforest in Wales in the past, but this area in Devon struck me as being more extensive and rich. Nothing beats a river flowing and muttering over rocks in a forest. Here it’s the River Bovey.

When we returned home I decided to work on another rainforest altered book, but this time of a temperate rainforest. I’ve featured an otter – they visit the River Bovey – a couple of stoats, a pied flycatcher and a jay among the ferns, moss, lichen and rocks.

Once again forests feature in my art. Like the author, Jay Griffiths, forests and woods make me happy. Temperate Rainforest Altered Book is available in my Etsy shop and in my website shop.

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Posted on February 24, 2023 by Alexi — 4 Comments

A Dragon Encounter Altered Book

Twilight seeps through old, gnarled trees. The quiet is broken by a whisper as sparks of flame ignite; there is a fire aglow deep in the forest this night of the full moon, this night of the Dragon Moon.

Listen. What do you hear?

– A baying of hunting dogs far off; the muffled hoot of an owl; the plaintive sigh of a sleeping tree as it slumbers deep in time, ready to awaken, ready to rouse, ready… but not quite.

Wait, while the moon hangs potent and heavy, casting indigo shadows over the castle ruins, something else stirs. On to a mound of rocks climbs an old man, silvered hair and beard shimmering in the light of moon and flame, a whizened wizard of a man.

It is happening.

Suddenly the flames roll into a ball of fire and into the flames the old man raises his arms. In a powerful explosion of light, he brings forth a great dragon from out of the ether, broad as comet, sinewy as snake, as vociferous as any monstrous beast of night. This is the beast of the full moon, unleashed. This is it. This is it. A cry resounds throughout the forest. The awakening has begun…

An altered book commission now off to its new home.

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Posted on January 21, 2023 by Alexi — 2 Comments

New Items in my Shops

To start the year I’ve added a few new items to my Etsy shop and website shop. First is another papercut concertina card, In the Hedge:

In the Hedge Concertina Card back — In the Hedge Concertina Card – back

In the Hedge Concertina Card - front — In the Hedge Concertina Card – front

I love crouching down and looking into hedges. Often I see birds skulking among an interwoven tangle of branches and leaves of various species. I love leafy detail :) To capture this view I papercut two holes in the card that frame a dunnock’s nest. Dunnocks choose to nest quite close to the ground and are often found in gardens.

When our resident fox visited our garden during daylight hours, we would sometimes find it curled up and tucked beneath a cotoneaster bush. I decided to put a sleeping fox on the back of this new card along with a magpie. It’s interesting that magpies have a special relationship with foxes, often following them about, possibly to benefit from any morsels disturbed by a foraging fox.

I have a few new sepia wildlife cards using images from my Into the Woods calendar. They can be bought separately or as a set of five.

Sepia Wildlife Card Pack — Sepia Wildlife 5-Card Pack

Finally I have a couple of new prints including Night Vigil, which is also a C6 sized greetings card.

I recently listed a new altered book, but it sold very soon after listing. Anyway, here is a photo of Still Deer Moon, that has gone to a new home:

Still Deer Moon Altered Book — Still Deer Moon altered book

I’m working on a small altered sketchbook that I’ll write about soon. I have ideas for more… meanwhile,

Wishing everyone a lovely new year!

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