What Iceland taught me about TRUST and why it matters in my business and artistic practice.
I went to Iceland to walk the Laugavegur Trail and cross the Obsidian Desert. What has resulted is a deeper connection to my maker and artistic practice. Unlocked by this experience I have returned with lot’s of stories that I will begin to share.
I travelled to Iceland with my friend of more than 20 years Lisa, we decided to walk the trail to celebrate our 50th solar returns and the eclipse. A decade earlier we took our first trip here together along the South Coast and I fell in love with the gravity and magic of this island.
We joined a guided 5 day group trek camping in tents with Iceland Trail Travelbase. It was recommended to me by a dear friend and photographer Lindsay (Wildsol Creatives) who had been invited to take photographs on the trail the year before.
I knew that this trek would push me physically and emotionally and from the moment I introduced myself to fellow travellers at the airport and into our first briefing I felt immediate and unconditional trust in them all.
I was scared, I can admit that, I doubted my ability to complete the trek despite the training I had been focussing on for 2 months to mitigate an old achilles injury. Talk of snow bridges and emergency blankets to stay warm at night in our tents hit home fast.
Despite the fear I committed to all that I might receive from this experience
After 2 days in the brilliantly beautiful and colour filled Rhyolite Mountains we walked in 70km winds and sleet across an obsidian desert the conditions concentrated in my body one step at a time. Five full hours of silent contemplation in a monochrome landscape surrounded by brilliant green mountains at the edge of the expanse.
There is something about a landscape like that which makes trust very tangible.
You trust your preparation.
You trust your body.
You trust your guides.
You trust the people walking with you.
You trust without being able to see the whole journey.
On several occasions myself and others in the group felt someone at their back as they traversed the desert. I had a felt sense that ancestors past were walking with me, the veil had thinned and I trusted them too.
It seems that I have been working on TRUST for sometime and as the word I named as my core experience of this trip is repeated in me so I see it expand back over the last 4 years.
My Dad passed four years ago (yes he was with me in the desert) and it has taken me until now to begin to understand the process I have been in since then. I became disillusioned with my work, deliberately slowed down and focussed on my family. I disassociated so much into my families lives that eventually I began to crave my own back.
I was walking my business through a time of ‘just enough’ and an enforced rest state.
My remedy was to invest in myself and my livelihood with sheer abandon to two women I trusted implicitly and my gratitude moves toward them always.
Naomi Absalom arrived in my life as a web and brand client who I have been working with for over 15 years Naomi became my mentor and I bore the fruits of the community I helped her to build since 2022. More recently I have been studying Alchemy with her and it has lit up my academic and artist maiden soul and allowed it to be integrated to my midlife crone.
Lucy Aitkenread came into my Orbit and charmed my heart, I knew that I could learn a lot from her energy in the world and the pragmatic and effective approach to matriarchal business that she leads with. Lucy speaks about business as livelihood, more than just ‘business activities’ it is our lives and our devotion to them along with all things that bring strength, abundance and joy to them.
TRUST in our work together.
The more a client trusts me, the richer the experience becomes for both of us.
Trust creates space for creativity to expand, space for me to listen deeply, follow an instinct, make unexpected connections and let ideas unfold beyond the obvious allowing something very special to emerge. As we spend more time together the work becomes a shared process where experience, intuition and imagination can meet. The deeper the trust, the more generously I can bring my self to the work and the more possibility there is for us to co-create.
When someone invites me into their livelihood, they are trusting me with something deeply personal.
The more a client trusts me, the richer the experience becomes for both of us. It allows me to listen deeply, follow an instinct, make unexpected connections and let ideas unfold. Allows me to bring more of my curiosity, intuition, experience and imagination to the work.
When you feel held in a process and a period of direct relationship, you become more open to possibility. You can explore, evolve and potentially witness your own work differently.
Trust does not mean handing over your vision. You know your work, your people and your experience. I bring my understanding of design, digital spaces, tech and creative thinking.
Back in Iceland, there were moments when the landscape seemed to disappear around us, we couldn't see very far ahead, but we could see enough.
Projects can be the same, we don't always need to see the whole journey, but we do need to trust our own steps and the person we choose to walk beside us, stay curious about what might emerge, and take the next step.
TRUST in my own work.
I have been working with a devoted practice of painting, which has sought to be a catalyst to quiet my critical observer.
My first book of paintings on instagram.
It is teaching me how to approach my work and my livelihood with grace for myself, radical forgiveness and attention to what results from staying with it.
What is emerging is a strong desire to create again, to offer physical objects to the world and I will be launching a new space to purchase prints, artworks and talismans.
The challenge of writing is something I am greeting in this series, to create a story and clarity around a point, to feel how hard this work is and to receive the pleasure of completion and to become comfortable with my words again.
As a client of Brightfeather.Studio and as a friend of Sarah, you are offered all that I am, techy, artist, guide, visionary. In order to honour this more deeply I am reorganising my own website, following and testing my own processes and drawing my artist out into the open. It will be unfolding for a while.
If you are looking for a project guide I would love to discuss how we can work together in trust.
My steps through the obsidian desert Mælifellssandur Iceland.
