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VIRTUAL SENIOR SHOW: Hannah Mackenzie Bourke

VIRTUAL SENIOR SHOW: Hannah Mackenzie Bourke
Thu, May 20, 2021, 12:00 am to Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 11:59 pm

VIRTUAL SENIOR SHOW: Hannah Mackenzie Bourke

Art is a living language of the human soul.
It is a bridge to the divine within each of us.
It is a sacred mirror for our hidden and/or truest selves.
It is a roadmap revealing the secrets of the universe through the artifact of history.
For as long as I can remember it has been the closest thing I’ve known to magic.
Stirring feelings of reverence and wonder as new forms pour forth from my fingertips, while
The terror of self-hatred slowly gives way to something beautiful.

I am enchanted by the rhythmic nature of the ever-giving Earth Mother.
Spellbound by the wild drumbeat of my once shattered heart, and the mystery
Of ceaseless devotion that keeps this world and the whole cosmic order
Orbiting in ecstatic union,
Patiently waiting for you and I to remember our own perfect alignment.                            

My return to creating art has been a painful one.
Slowly the colors soothed and healed my callous caution,
Revealing an innocence within me that had been buried under thirty years of feeling unworthy.
I hope my paintings, prints, and photographs help you uncover a little bit more of
Your own sacred essence.
As we collectively begin to remember the truth
Of our inseparable connection to nature, one another, and the Divine.

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 1

“Earth’s Daughter”

Oil On Canvas

2019

I know the angels know my name
I’ve come to talk with them again
They’re always whispering
Whispering as they ride
Free on the wind

Holy Mother
I heard you crying
Out for who will come
Who will heal
The sisters and brothers
All my children
The sacred ones
I am swift as the wind blows
I am holy fire
I am pure as water
I am Earth’s Daughter

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 2

“Sacred Undulations”

Oil on Wood

2020

I’ll ride the wind like fever
Across the Great Divide
I’ll return when you call my name, for
My love is not afraid to die

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 3

“Hieros Gamos”

Woodblock Relief Print

2021

Hieros Gamos represents the inner unification of polarities and marriage of God the Divine within every aspect of our being.

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 4

“Spirits of The Desecrated Forest”

Oil on Canvas

2019

"For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.

When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live. When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness"

Hermann Hesse 1877 - 1962

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 5

“Visions of Sophia”

Oil on Canvas

2019

I can not tell the secrets I’ve had
Whispered into my mind along the way
They come like the wind, circling in
The clouds migration over the bay
While the chord of my spine reaches up
Like a vine, receiving the messages coded
As rays of lightning who whistle and sweep
Through valley and vein where bone marrow keeps
The ancient of days laid dormant in haste
Awaiting the reckon of angels who praise
Beloved O’ Mother it’s you who gives grace
Delivered in reverence regardless of faith

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 6

“Aeroplane”

Lith Print Photograph

2015

Three years before I transferred to UC Santa Cruz, I attended The University of Montana. My time there was predominately spent in the blackness of the student darkroom. I would spend hours upon hours developing my photographs and experimenting with alternative process techniques and chemistries, oftening emerging lightheaded and reeking of chemicals after every session. While I enjoy the process of taking the photographs, my true pleasure is in the art of developing each and every photographic print. The lith print process involves exceptionally long development times, often exceeding 40 minutes of meticulously rocking each individual print, one at a time, back and forth in the cradle bed of liquid chemistry.

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 7

“Divine Feminine Chained”

Lith Print Pinhole Photographs

2015

I captured these images using three of my own handbuilt pinhole cameras. I positioned each camera at different angles and orchestrated the aperture timing of each image simultaneously. Many blessings to my friend who stood stoically still for ten minutes straight in thirty degree Montana winter air.

In this series the woman holds the chains of the past, the pain she has endured and that of her ancestors, which binds her consciousness until she is able to release the energetic imprints stored within her sacred body. When she is able to let go of the chains through healing of the mind, body, and spirit, she will rise into the divine feminine she was born to be. And with the resurrection of the divine feminine principle, then too we will see the restoration of the true divine masculine principle, to rise together for the liberation of all beings.

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 8

“Godspe”

Woodblock Relief Print, Watercolor

2021

Godspe is a word I came up with to acknowledge synchronicity, miracles, magic, the beauty of living in alignment with divine will, and co-creating life with Spirit. Godspe also points to the unfolding of timelines from a higher perspective and to the remembrance of our inseparable connection to each other, nature, and the divine. “God-spuh”

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 9

“Sun Worship”

Woodblock Relief Print

2020

This is conscious communion.
Our sun who gives life to all, regardless of what we choose to do with it.
It is the ever loving presence of burning desire, quietly praying for us to align with the urge to create our lives, instead of turning away from our own light and perpetuating more needless destruction.

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 10

“Moonstruck”

Woodblock Relief Print

2020

Before I remembered my love for Golden Sun
I praised its reflection in the glow of Silver Moon
The shadow priestess hung high overhead
She who stirs the ocean waters and fervent blood of my womb

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 11

“The Seeker Haunted By The Hand Of Death”

Silver Gelatin Print Photograph

2015

This is a self portrait taken during the height of my photographic fever. Although the hand of death no longer haunts me, it held a tight grasp on my curious fixation to understand the nature of reality and how I got into this skinbag-spacesuit (Or rather how I could get out of it). I no longer believe in death, so death no longer haunts me the way it did. I’ve found the only way out is to go within and clear away the accumulated debris to reveal what you have always been, and always will be.

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 12

“My Outer World”

Oil on Canvas

2019

One of two self-portrait oil paintings depicting my inner/outer perceptions. I am the subtle reflection in the dresser mirror as much as I am the books and art that surround me.

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 13

“My Inner World”

Oil on Wood

2019

This is my faith in surrendering to where the current will take me.
I look to the heavens as Spirit moves me through this world of form.

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 14

“Inner Light”

Woodblock Relief Prints

2020

A holy trinity of light. The sun, the moon, and the earth of our human bodies. The inner light of our souls.

 

Hannah Mackenzie Bourke 15

“Lightning Goddess of Love / Mother God Returns To Heal Our Broken Hearts”

Egg Tempera on Wood

2021

We are wounded, and we are weary
So we summon the sovereign ones
Ancient voices to guide us clearly
Into the battle knowing love has won
Holy Mother with tears of lightning
Teach us how to end the war
Holy Father I am not frightened
Give me courage to laugh at the storm

 

Contact information for Hannah:

Email: sacredlightalchemy@gmail.com

Website: https://bluebird-trombone-rs6y.squarespace.com/images-native/

(My website domain will soon change to HannahMackenzieBourke.com)

Godspe!