Journey
 
The Journey hails from Amelia’s ongoing Cowboy Sabbath series, in which she reimagines imagery of cowboys with powerful women proudly taking the reins of their own life.
This piece is inspired by verse from Mary Oliver’s poem of the same name, in which she explores finally learning to listen to the guiding voice within. Amelia explains:
“This piece is to mark a moment in life, a transformation. It explores the idea of what you would do if no one was watching. What if it was just you and the desert? Stones. Wind. You could go back to childhood carelessness. Your body would only be yours. Not filtered and measured, policed and thirsted by other gazes. Instead felt by your inner gaze alone.”
This giclée print with deckled edges is from a limited edition of 80, signed and numbered by the artist. Each piece in the limited edition is hand-finished with acrylic paint, making it unique.
Size (cm): 100 x 76.87
£480
 
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Copyright @ 1986 by Mary Oliver. First published in Dream Work, Atlantic Monthly Press. Reprinted in New and Selected Poems, Volume One, Beacon Press.