![]() ![]() ![]() The Sheela-na-gigs inspired me to paint them. Along the route of that odyssey, I looked at, touched and painted stone carvings that inexplicably linked me to something greater than me. It was in the early 1980s, when I was a student at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, that I started what the great archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, author of Language of the Goddess and Civilisation of the Goddess, called my ‘Sheela odyssey’. I was curious and determined to see ancient stone carvings of naked women exposing their genitalia. I was enthralled when I heard that there were actual stone carvings called Sheela-na-gigs, hidden away in the National Museum because they were regarded as the pornography of our ancestors. My favourite was ‘a crazy hoor that might leap out at you showing her gee’, that last word being the slang in Ireland for the female genitals and not a million miles away from ‘gig’. ![]() Most explanations I came across were colourful but derogatory towards women. I am not sure where I first heard the term ‘Sheela-na-gig’, but I do remember trying to find out what it meant. ![]()
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