Kindling for your Fire - Night Flower the Life & Art of Vali Myers

It's here - it's real!

YES!!! The new book: Night Flower - the Life & Art of Vali Myers has been birthed at a beautiful launch and exhibition at Outre Gallery in Melbourne on the Eve of the Spring Equinox. Thank you to everyone who turned up to celebrate Vali and her extraordinary life & art, what a fantastic night and it even included a visit by the cops - Vali would have loved that, she would have disarmed them with her fox ways and invited them inside. The biggest hugs in the world for Nicole Karidis & Ruth Cullen of the Vali Myers Art Gallery Trust and Martin McIntosh & Gemma Jones of Outre Gallery & Publishing. Wow - it's really here. I remember the first day years ago when all of sat around my dining room table and the seed of this dream was born and to hold this luminous, golden dream of a book in my hand right now is so exciting. 

It was an honour to be asked to write the foreword for Night Flower, to express in words the magic & wisdom that Vali gifted to me during our friendship. This gift is a creative 'quickening' that is open and available to you all in this book and I encourage you to READ IT, SPEAK OF IT, SHARE IT and then let it inspire you to CREATE. Wild, flaming love to you Queen of Foxes and to you all - THE DREAM IS REAL. Julia xxxx.

Night Flower is available from Outre Gallery where you can also see for a limited time Vali's original drawings, personal diaries and talismans in a current exhibition. Go and see it!!!

Inside the Outre Hive before opening with  Nicole Karidis & Ruth Cullen of the Vali Myers Trust with Gemma Jones & Martin McIntosh from Outre in the background

Night Flower with Vali's personal diaries and talismans

Original painting: Queen of Thorns Vali Myers

Original painting: Stella Maris by Vali Myers

love you Vali

Do You See What I See - In the Eyes of Venus

Frida Gustavsson for British Vogue via Sisterwolf

On Monday night we will experience the Full Moon Eclipse. The Moon is in fiery Sagittarius and just days away from the Venus Occultation when we will see Venus making a visible path across the Sun on 6th June. And so this week we will feel the mighty power of the Divine Feminine expressed through Venus, the Goddess of Beauty, Abundance and Love. Like a dancer, she will move across the face of the Sun unveiled, exposed and radiant. 

Astrologically there has been a lot of energy available to us in the last month to begin embracing our shadow, to bring all of the orphaned parts of ourselves into the light. When we do this we realise what we thought was unacceptable or unloveable is strangely beautiful. In these changing times we are being asked more and more: who are you and what is it that you truly want? To truly understand and feel the answer we must be able to look ourselves in the eye and see the incredible amount of potential and beauty that is innate, within us all, just waiting to be unleashed. Do not reject what is strange about yourself, but display it with love, this is your unique gift and this is what Venus can help us to see with our own eyes this week. 

Vali Myers diary inscription Paris, 1956    www.valimyers.com

Someone who taught me more about true beauty and fearless love was Australian artist, Vali Myers. Here is a photograph and inscription from her earliest surviving diary written in Paris in 1956-57. I love that she dedicates this diary to herself, simply 'My Book'. These inspiring diaries and Vali's paintings will be published in September in an exquisite book called Night Flower by Outre Press. I have read Vali's diaries many times but each time I pick them up I find new inspiration, an invitation to fall in love with your own spirit. On the day that Vali's diaries arrived at my home 2 weeks ago, I took a walk to Williamstown Beach with my friend Sarah and this is what we found waiting on the shore. A faerie house! A beautiful silver mystery waiting on the threshold between the worlds of land and sea. One of Vali's gifts was to teach us to look beyond the mask, the mundane, the ordinary to see the spirit within. May you be inspired this week to see yourself with the eyes of Venus, to look deeply into the mirror and glimpse your spirit. Welcome this spirit like a beautiful creature emerging from the forest, a creature that has never been named or classified because there has never been another like it before. Be YOU! 

Wild Full Moon love to you all x

Faerie House found at Williamstown

Happy Birthday to the Wilde Vixen

Photograph of Vali taken by a very young Mary Ellen Mark in Positano. www.valimyers.com

In our world, Australian artist Vali Myers would have turned 81 today - in her worlds she is eternally spiralling, diving, and dancing in a cosmos of energy as wild, ancient and mysterious as her beautiful self. Love to you Queen of Foxes, may your memory and visionary art keep inspiring us all. 

Wu man, Vali Myers www.outregallery.com

Desert Fox, Vali Myers (prints available from Outre Gallery)

Moon Hare, Vali Myers

Vali and her owl Jonnie

Vali playing her gramophone on the beach, photo: Flame Schon

Self portrait with Foxy

Vali & I in Naples 2000