Hello my lovely ones,
It will be a quick one this week. I’m still mourning, still dealing with grief. It’s like a strong gust has blown a door wide open. Who knew there were so many things on the other side!
I’ll be looking at a person who described life “like a comet, burning bright and fast”. She came across my instagram feed and as soon as I saw her face I knew I had to find out more.
Her name was Vali Myers. She was also known as the witch of Positano.
She was born in Australia, spent her school days daydreaming and escaping into the bush. She left home at 14 and wanted to become a dancer. When she was nineteen she’d had enough of the staid atmosphere in Melbourne. She got on a ship and moved to post-war Paris.
She danced, she partied, she painted and she tamed a wild fox. She also struggled, she was poor, she was hungry. She ended up in prison for vagrancy and for a period she was addicted to opium. Then she moved to a farm in Positano in Italy where she painted by gaslight and created a wildlife sanctuary.
She was discovered in the 60s and people like Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful visited her in Italy. In the 70s she went to New York to sell her art. She lived in the Chelsea Hotel and met Andy Warhol and tattooed Patti Smith’s knee and that’s perhaps why we still know about her and her work today.
This is a quote from her journal:
“Let it all be animal, my life and death, hard and clean like that, anything but human… a lot I care, me with my red heart in the dark earth and my tattooed feet following the animal ways.”
And that is what I needed to read today. Thank you Vali.
– Picture at the top is by Eva Collins for the National Portrait Gallery Australia. The painting above by Vali Myers is from somewhere on the internet and I couldn’t find an original source.
– Facts and quote from Vali Myers website and W magazine.
I love the story of Vali Myers.
I’m so sorry for your loss. Be gentle with yourself in your time of grief.