Motik (Marie Laura Crespo) | Lost Myths Ink, LLC

Motik: A Woman of Many Cultures
©2002 by Debora Hill
MedioCom

She should be just a little confused about her place on the earth, this woman who comes from a background so varied and multi-hued it makes the term `melting pot' seem mild. But she is completely grounded in her art and the niche she has made for herself -- even her artist name is one she took because it was unusual, she liked the sound of it ... Motik ... just one name, when she's an artist. When she's a teacher, though...of Spanish, French and Wiccan lore, she uses her birth name, Maria Laura Crespo.
"Among my ancestry are Moslems, Catholics and Jews. That's why my mother started to study metaphysics and Wicca. Of course, it wasn't called that in France -- just witchcraft. My grandmother was a healer; she was Spanish, and my mother took it up after her. However, my mother was also well-educated, so she was able to study the arts on a level my grandmother didn't have open to her. I grew up with a very eclectic, spiritual background. I was taught that the truth is behind everything; every religious trend is acceptable except fanaticism -- that's the only place the searcher can't find the truth because it's blind."
Motik is an artist in many media; she paints on just about anything she can find -- wood, silk, canvas ... and all her work is heavily imbued with the spirituality of women. And she has been a craftsperson for most of her life; this is how she sees herself, as part of a group of women who make art because they are naturally drawn to it, almost as a type of nature-worship.
"I started out as a craftsperson because I can't help making things. I've had no professional training as an artist, just what I got as part of the school curriculum when I was a child. Since I was very little I've always liked to make things on my own. I remember spending the summer with my grandparents, and they had a huge walk-in closet that went up two floors. I spent the summer painting Buddha figures and Virgin Marys all over the walls, until it became like a temple."
The combination of the Buddhas and the virgins is an apt analogy, because Motik's entire life has been spent among people of such cultural diversity she has incorporated something of each into her work. But her belief, her love, is reserved for the path her grandmother and mother took -- Motik is a lover of the goddess, the Great Earth Mother -- her inspiration springs from this source and she wants to give it back tenfold.
"Because we lived very closely with nature, and for most of my life we lived in the country, we practiced a type of nature-worship. Over the last ten years I've given myself permission to do more and more in the way of art. I'm somewhere between an artist and a craftswoman. Some of my work can be classified as fine art, but some is definitely in the real of craft, and that's the way I like it."
"I love kids, but I never wanted to have them. An artist's life is unpredictable. It costs a lot of money to provide well for a child, and give it the things a child needs, and I would want to be with it. I don't think it's right to pay someone else to take care of your child if you could be with it yourself. When the notion came up whether I should have a child, I said, let's consider it. Hmmm .... no. I like kids, though, so I take care of friends' children sometimes in order to have them around. A lot of people who don't have any children don't like them, either -- I do."
Motik's work is heavily imbued with the symbolism of her beliefs and her life in Europe. And like anyone who values and worships nature and the earth, she draws much of her inspiration from them. But some of those symbols are older than written history, older than the religious beliefs of the western world.
"The bird is something I use extensively as a symbol, and only the raven, because it has a totemic meaning. I love all animals, but with some I feel a particular resonance. The snake in particular, because it's a universal symbol of transformation. Snakes change skins -- they go underground and hibernate with a new, shiny skin and leave the old ones behind. So, they're a symbol of transformation, and they used to be a phallic symbol.
"Because of the transformation they were also a woman's symbol. Then there's a third thing that always amazed me about snakes. I was once drawing a snake in a spiral. The spiral is another symbol that is universal; you find it everywhere, from cave paintings to modern designs for clothes. Modern physics tells us that the universe contracts and expands, and the spiral goes into infinity. Ancient people made the connection between the spiral to indicate eternity, and the snake which makes the spiral. People on islands in the Pacific, where they have no snakes on the land, use a sea eel to make the same symbol.
"I also use spiders, because they represent the weaver; another female symbol representing the crone, the one who has the wisdom to weave. I have a special affinity with crows; these birds are strongly present in the mythology of native peoples. He is the messenger of the gods and goddesses. The raven is also a messenger for the gods in Europe, and he is also the shape-changer. Living in the countryside in Europe as a kid, I felt a lot of affinity for these birds. They're the only birds that are around all year long. The others go down to Morocco and hang out in the south of Spain and come back in the spring."
Motik is technology-resistant and thus hasn't yet succumbed to e-mail or a website. About this she says, "I'm afraid I'm either truly old-fashioned or extremely avant-garde in form, waging full and uncompromising resistance to pc's, e-mail, bread machines and assorted fundamentals of life in the '90s."
Her newest line includes 'Spirit Dolls'. They are shamanic and bear the symbols and talismans of many mythologies.
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