Soul Mapping: A Conversation with Alexandra Eldridge

Abstract

Alexandra Eldridge shares the circumstances of her early life, the factors that shaped her as an artist, and the processes that emerge as she goes to her canvas. She describes her time as a co-founder and long-time resident of an artistic community based on the principles of William Blake, a community that she and her husband called Golgonooza after Blake's City of Art. In her words, “My paintings are insights, acknowledgements, or if you will, a soul map of my journey through life.”

Keywords:

• William Blake
• dreams
• Alexandra Eldridge
• Golgonooza
• mythology
• painting
• poetry
• soul
• symbology
• spirituality in art

Notes

^1. “…since at least I know this, with sure and certain knowledge: a man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.”

Or in the French “….qu'une oeuvre d'homme n'est rien d'autre que ce long cheminement pour retrouver par les detours de l'art les deux ou trois images simples et grandes sur lesquelles le coeur, une premiere fois, s'est ouvert.”

From Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, edited by Philip Thody, translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy, New York: Vintage Books, 1970, 17.