The Speaking Land 

"Country is loved, needed, and cared for, and cares for her people in turn".*02

About 20 years ago I made a painting with the title: 'The Speaking Land'. This work suggested the soil of the Uluru Area in Central-Australia and was made of thick paint in the colors red and brown. The Uluru Area is nowadays a part of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. This park features spectacular geological rock-formations; the Uluru and Kata Tjuta. The traditional owners are the Anangu people; one of the oldest human societies in the world. The title 'The Speaking Land' refers for me to the language of the Land through stories, memories, the growing plants, wind-whispers, ceremonies, the animals, the soil, the stones and the sounds of a specific place. A couple of years later I read the book: 'The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia' by Ronald M.Berndt & Catherine H.Berndt. The authors couple are known for their anthropological research and fieldwork among Aborigines in many parts of Australia. At the back-cover of this book is written:'The Land still speaks to us and The Speaking Land will helps us understand its language'. *01 This quote is the underlaying phrase and base for my artworks. The Land speaks and if we listen we can hear his/her voice. This phrase inspires me to make a deeper connection with a natural place in my own local environment through listening, looking, smelling, touching, sitting, breathing, walking, moving, lying down, thinking, being quiet and to experience. This personal journey creates new memories, an another experience of time and a deep feeling of interconnection with the place. I capture the language and the essence of the places through drawings, videos, thoughts, poems, field-recordings, texts, maps and photo's. As a part of my work I quote phrases of poets, philosophers, indigenous people and writers in the fields of spiritual ecology, philosophy, geography, architecture, anthropology, science and the knowledge of traditional wisdom. I studied Fine Arts at Minerva Academy Groningen & The Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam ~Annemarie Cilon~

'Spiritual ecology is a recognition of the need to return to the source of our own sacred nature, and of the spiritual practices that affect both the individual and the whole, practices that can through our own individual awareness and action, also help restore the connection between the Earth and its own source'.  Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee