The Meadow Art Studio

Imagine a little girl playing pirate beside a “sunken ship” hidden in the forest on the edge of the sea – feels like something out of a novel – but for me it is a happy childhood memory.

There are some stories from childhood that never truly leave us.
They simply wait quietly beneath the surface until one day they return in another form.

As a very young child growing up with both parents of strong Irish roots, I was endlessly captivated by being told stories of two legendary Irish female pirates: Anne Bonny and Grace O’Malley. Their adventures filled my imagination. They were fierce, daring women who sailed so far beyond the expectations for women of their time, and somewhere deep within me, they awakened a lifelong longing for adventure, creativity, freedom, travel and the sea. They each had different pirate skillsets, and were from different centuries. One had a happy ending and one disappeared suddenly in history.

These two fearless Pirate Queens were each legends of the seas. Grace O’Malley was a shrewd politician pirate, sailing up to London and boldfaced negotiating with Queen Elizabeth I and defending her clan’s interests. Grace O’Malley controlled the seas from Galway to Scotland. Anne Bonny was a wild rebel, driven by a thirst for adventure and a disdain for authority. She was loved and feared sailing throughout the caribbean. Grace O’Malley eventually retired to her castle and a life of relative comfort, while Anne Bonny’s fate remains shrouded in mystery.

For years, nearly every day, my childhood was spent playing “pirates” in the forests behind our home. Looking back now, it still feels uncanny that a strange large rock outcropping had eons ago emerged from the earth there, looking exactly like the remains of a sinking pirate ship. To a child’s imagination, it became utterly real — our hidden pirate ship deep within the woods. I was always one of these two women pirates, sailing imaginary oceans beneath the trees.

As I grew older, each and every one of those dreams quietly came true.
I travelled around the world.
I crossed many oceans while at sea.
I sought out adventures and sometimes adventures found me.
I spent time near the sea and gathered stories, memories, fragments, textures, colours, and experiences from different chapters of life.

Perhaps it is a blessing or a curse to maintain a childlike sense of creative adventure and imagination in life all through adulthood.

This past winter, while working in my studio and experimenting with encaustic collage techniques using vintage papers, old book pages, layered textures, and beeswax, those childhood memories suddenly resurfaced. The idea arrived almost fully formed — Paper Pirate Treasures.

The name felt perfect.

These pieces are tiny treasures gathered from journeys both real and imagined. Each encaustic jewelry piece carries layers of story: fragments of old papers, weathered textures, hidden symbols, and luminous wax surfaces that preserve fleeting moments in time. Like objects discovered in an old sea chest, no two are exactly alike.

There is also something beautifully poetic to me about preserving paper in wax. The encaustic medium protects delicate fragments that might otherwise disappear — much like memory itself preserves pieces of who we once were.

In many ways, this collection is an offering to the imaginative child I once was: the girl running through forest paths searching for pirate ships, dreaming of distant worlds and future adventures.

And perhaps she knew all along that one day she would create treasures of her own.