Biography

Gaia Woolf-Nightingall is an experienced organic horticulturist, arboriculturist, permaculture designer, creative writer and visual artist. Gaia’s work seeks to imbue others, with a richer understanding of the natural world. Gaia’s powerful elemental mandala paintings, landscape designs and stories, give us pause to observe, experience and acknowledge the beauty and fragility of wild places.

Gaia is also a priestess and teacher in the Reclaiming Feri tradition, an Earth based spiritual path, which has along with her many creative endeavors, helped to guide her towards a more authentic experience of self and sense of balance with nature.

As a child, expressing how I felt about the vibrant world around me with a pencil in hand was a source of constant delight. In these youthful expressions I learned ‘how use of imagery could both catalyze and develop my understanding of my world, while also providing me with the most effective way to communicate these feelings and ideas. Over the years of transition from childhood to adulthood.

I began to weave together aspects of my Celtic heritage with exciting myth and legends from even more ancient civilizations.

My affinity for the myths and conceptualizations of ancient cultures was consolidated during my years as a student of philosophy, when I grew to understand how they reflected eternal truths about the aspirations of the human spirit that remain as relevant today as when they were first told. This sense of the beauty in the mythological is a theme that I have since woven into my life and art.

It was while creating a garden, whilst I was studying organic horticulture in Eire in the year 2000, that my appreciation of color and the aesthetic qualities of a garden transformed into the desire to return to putting paint to canvas. I had long enjoyed sketching the unique landscapes around me, the textures and colors of the living world were always reminiscent to me of an eclectic abstract in production. During my years at horticultural college I began working with the medium of acrylic to express my connection to the Earth. here I found  joy, inspiration and reverence in the sacred complexities of the natural world. I also began to combine my Earth based spiritual tradition with the symbology and iconology of my Celtic heritage, of which there are many visible reminders’ in modern day Ireland.

The Elemental forces of Air, Fire, Water and Earth that move and swirl inside the great cauldron of creation, manifesting the perfect vessel for spirit, are the foundational motivation for my works.
I celebrates the wonder of these sacred elements, through bold
hand painted mandalas. Each is delicately woven with unique Celtic /insular knot work, integrating spiritual and artistic practice with threads, that transverse the centuries back to ancient Europe and a time when art was pure devotion to the Divine.

Blessings to all Gaia Woolf-Nightingall

Also find me @

https://www.instagram.com/gaiawoolf

https://twitter.com/gaiawoolf

https://facebook.com/GaiaWoolfNightingall

www.pinterest.com/gaiawoolf