Hawthorn + Willow: inks for the heart

Fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders

Oct 25, 2023

It is not clear to me how to start this INKLINGS. We are witnessing great injustice and horror in Gaza and the complexity, intensity and impotence can feel overwhelming alongside the heartfelt, human longing to assist in some way. So I feel and I work.

These 8 ink pieces I made last week and are available to buy with all proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders/Medicins Sans Frontieres, who are working on the ground in Gaza at the moment supporting civilians in need of care.

Hawthorn Ink (2 available) and Willow Ink (3 available)

These works are made from Hawthorn and Willow*; plants that are used in herbal medicine to tend to grief. Hawthorn is also a particularly potent heart tonic.

A5 (148mm x 210mm) original inkwork on thick paper
Sliding scale offer £20-£35
- with £2 p+p to UK.
Please contact for overseas deliveries.

All proceeds of sales are donated to Doctors Without Borders.

What to do:

Get in touch by replying to this email or via hello@kathrynjohn.co.uk with request for either Hawthorn/Willow or Any, your donation amount, plus your postal address
I will send link for transfer payment either via PayPal or BACS.
Once payment received I will post artworks.
Donation to Doctors Without Borders made this week.

Information on contacting local MP in UK to demand government support.

Here are images of the ink works, with a video of the particulary iridescent Willow with iron.

Natural ink on paper. Willow ink with added iron and copper pipe. — Willow Ink

Original inkwork on paper. Hawthorn with iron rust and copper pipe. — Hawthorn Ink

I have been reading and revisiting Elif Shafak’s ‘How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division’ this last fortnight. She speaks of keeping on working, and I see this as the work of liberation, justice, and care in whatever way that is real for us.

‘I get angry about things, then I go on and work’, said the novelist, essayist, scholar Toni Morrison.
When the world is blatantly infuriating we can’t keep repressing our anger. At the same time, we need to go out and connect with our fellow human beings and stand by those who are hurting; we shouldn’t forget to look within, criticially examine our own assumptions and hidden stereotypes, expand and soften our hearts; and as we do all that, we must go on and continue working just as others have before us.

Holding the edge of not turning away, calling action where we can, feeling the strain, and staying sane/as well as we can, is a tender and unruly path. With so many things that come and touch our hearts, lives, bodies, and minds.

My noticing of the ‘good things’ practice is an anchor at these times, and has been in recent months. Looking for the things that have supported me, brought good feelings to the day, and things that I am thankful for. Over the last few years, my own personal constellation of bereavement, loss and grief has meant that parts of me, buried under the active, the coping, the doing, have often not wanted to see the light in the world again. These pained parts have not wanted to, not felt able to, contemplate a life where there was heartfelt goodness again. I thought that it would be an injustice to the loss, to the person I lost and the ongoing falling of scales from the eyes about so much hurt and misused power in the wider world.

But this valley of death and pain is not a place that I could exclusively call home any longer. It was the second anniversary of losing her and I knew that I had to come back to life. I found myself looking for a podcast to bring me some hope and came across Ross Gay’s Book of Delights. This has been a companion. That was nearly two years ago and it has been a trudging, gnarled and seering hot road. It has taken every effort.

It has taken facing the feelings and shaking the grief free.

It has changed me and this new life that emerges is one rooted in the love and loss of what has been. The grief does not heal or go away, it is that life has shaped itself around it. The gold in the shit is that this grief shows me my capacity to love.

Our grief, our pain, our anxiety, anger, rage, confusion all show us that we are awake to what is here.

Taking care of our bodies, hearts, minds and homes - in their material, human and ecological forms - is valid, needed and at times a confusing path of unknowns in its own way, coming with its own challenges imposed from the outside and inside.

Plants are allies in this and I find myself drawn to Hawthorn and Willow as comrades in grief and heartbreak. As is softness and warmth, fresh air and time to make, work and channel the simmering.

Do let me know if you would like to pick up one of these pieces.