Cornish Ghosts

Balmaiden Ghosts

The ghosts of two Balmaidens (female mine workers) haunting the ruins of Gunnislake Clitters Mine, not far from my house!  Balmaidens often started work as children.

This was inspired by a challenge to paint inspired by the words  ‘zeitgeist’, ‘ephemeral’ or ‘subliminal’.  I thought of approximately 999 very depressing things I could paint for those words, but I wanted to paint something more cheering, so in the end I went for ‘Ephemeral’ and painted one of our old copper & arsenic mines which were once both deadly and blighting, but now are overrun with plants and beautiful in their own way.

Then I decided to push my luck and added a pair of balmaidens for ‘zeitgeist’ – either literally as time-ghosts, or in the sense of ‘well, things may not be perfect now, but at least girls are not routinely expected to take jobs working in arsenic mines at the age of 7 or 8 years old’.   I used some of the photos on http://balmaiden.co.uk/ for clothing/ tools reference.

This is an A3 painting in acrylic on artboard.