Episode 6 Reclaiming Menarche with Sally Whelan

Reclaiming Menarche is a conversation about the first menstrual blood, it considers ways in which we can reclaim our menarche experience retrospectively, learn to lean into our bleeding times and heal what is often a lonely experience. The series is made from conversations with those who have influenced or inspired my own womb journey.

 

Hosted by Grace Hempshall, menstrual researcher and womb/fertility massage therapist.

 

Join Grace in episode 6 as she speaks with artist Sally Whelan. Sally is a Somerset based artist, she is a figurative painter, a wigmaker, a poet, a procrastinator and a thinker.

In this episode we talk somewhat less about menarche but more about what it means to explore a tactile, visual and playful relationship with our moon time bleed. I was really grateful when Sally agreed to record this as she invites us to learn how her monthly cycle and bleed is intrinsically linked to her creative practice and expression as a professional artist. We dive into her Blood Work practice, which plays with the overlap between devotion to self, pleasure & exploration and public art piece.

We also talk about Sallys recent series of enormous oil paintings: The Gender Divine which bring a fresh gaze upon the naked body, the stories held within the walls of the flesh and the divine nature of the unknowable self.

 

You can find out more about Sally by following her on instagram @painter.sally or visiting her website www.paintersally.com.

 

You can find out more about the Reclaiming Menarche series at www.withgracefrome.co.uk or on instagram at @reclaiming_menarche

 

For those of you who would like to know the content in advance of listening, themes explored within this episode are:

* nudity

* eating disorders

* menstrual blood