Ginger Gilmour

In Beauty before me, I walk

I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA on January 19, 1949 and
ever since I can remember I had a ‘dream’ which filled my days with
wonder. That dream was a quest for ‘Beauty.’ Even within the smallest
rill of running water on a derelict building site, I found beauty. I
dreamt of prince charming and living happily ever after. I dreamt of
angels in heaven sending love. I dreamt of the birds singing and poppy
fields as I stood upon a stonewall overlooking the Mystic River
pretending to fly.
As I entered my adulthood my quest led me into the world of Pink Floyd,
the rock band. Their music touched my very being and further inspired my
dream—the quest for Beauty and that one can live it! As it happened I
fell in love with David Gilmour, their lead-guitarist. Our first moments
were a girl’s dream come true. We married on the 7th of July 1975 and
over the next ten years gave birth to our four children: Alice, Clare,
Sara & Matthew. During this time my life expanded to include the
development of my own innate artistic qualities. I studied for eight
years with the English Visionary Artist, Cecil Collins. He inspired me
to touch the essence of life and then allow one’s own uniqueness to
create the form or drawing that would capture its treasured quality.
One summer as I was reading the biography of Georgia O’Keefe, a quote
from Stieglitz (her to-be husband) further empowered my quest. He said,
“I must meet this woman! She has the courage to reveal the Truth of
Woman!” Wow! I thought. When I returned in the autumn to my studio I had
the question, ”Do I have the courage to reveal the Truth of Woman?” The
one that many keep silently within for many reasons. This was to be
quite a challenge, for it was about this time that David and I chose to
go our separate ways.
It seems that throughout my journey of discovery of Beauty, several
questions, inspired often by the wise words of another, served as
keynotes leading me on my way. One that was revealed to me through the
teachings of Alice Bailey has become the basis of my quest…. “To
Create an Environment where IT can happen.” My first interpretation
guided me into the ART of Creating ME! The question appeared…. Who Am I?
In doing so I discovered my inner dance, my inner Beauty and the
courage to reveal it. This gave me my song—the melody of which is just
beginning to be sung.
My life up until the early nineties had given me the opportunity to live
amongst Beauty—now I saw that it was my quest to Create Beauty—to BE
Beauty! I painted long hours with a wish for this to become. I was drawn
to create forms that would capture a growing love of the many
dimensions of our being and the world. I was discovering: to manifest
Beauty one had to acknowledge the aspects of the visible and invisible
aspects of life…. Another question appeared…. How does one do that?
Cecil said, “The invisible is captured between the paint and the
glazes”; Rudolf Steiner says, “It is caught between the line, the curve
and the empty space”; other spiritual masters say, “It is caught within
the Silence that Sounds.”…. I feel ultimately it is YOU! It is ME! It is
our Vision! Our point of identification shapes our life.
Within the deepening out of this last question, I studied and then
taught a form of esoteric healing called Mental Colour Therapy founded
in England by Lily Cornford and Ronald Leech. Its main premise is to
unlock the ‘Healer Within’ through the use of Colour and Love. This
experience changed me; it changed my work; it gave me a depth of
understanding of How To BE and then to Create. Now I create in order to
Remember.
In the refurbishment of my new home, the saying “To create an
environment where IT can happen” took a new turn. At first I sought to
find a home where I would have more studio and teaching spaces, where my
own and other people’s creativity could expand. I made the plans for
the redecoration: to create living spaces and studio spaces. Then one
morning I awoke with an idea ‘to sculpt the walls’! After one year and
six months of concentrated work, I feel that I have taken a further step
into creating spaces and forms that give an experience of Beauty. To do
this my work plays between the visible and the invisible. It seems this
activates the imagination of the viewer and then opens them into their
own world of Beauty. I have seen this in action now by creating my home
from this point of view…my children, my workmen, my friends, the
postman and myself seem to be touched by a flow of tenderness and
courage to be Oneself with a Vision which brings Joy! For me this is
BEAUTY. And I hope and encourage everyone to Remember the BEAUTY that we
are and then Live It!