INPUT:

Songs I’m listening to today: TIGERS BLOOD- WAXAHATCHEE

Film I’m watching: ANOTHER ROUND- THOMAS VINTERBERG

OUTPUT:

CURRENT PIECE

Piece One: Oil on 120×90 canvas

WIP

I think I’m going to make an executive decision to make the spirals a block colour. Currently my piece is looking too ‘tribal’ I think because of the spiritual influences. I don’t want to be a white girl creating art that encroaches on spaces that don’t belong to me. Changing small elements of the piece will help me do this.

I painted the spirals a horrific colour. I also didn’t like the inconsistency of the spirals. It felt off and I need them to blend more into the background so I’ve completely gone over them. Can you tell I’m in my luteal phase? Path of destruction.

I’m going to need to lighten up the ground as well, it’s too heavy. Everything is wrong. Will make it right somehow.

Destruction and rebirth

Stil wanting to up the contrast on the spirals, but the piece now has a more atmospheric, less graphic approach. I feels more emotional and integrated. I hate getting rid of what I’d already done, but that’s what I’m exploring in my practice, the discomfort in uncertainty, the illusion of ‘going backwards’ where your drawing in to catapult forwards. This is not only a theme of my paintings but something that I am exploring in the act of painting itself, especially as a novice painter.

Understanding that either is neither ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ it just is.

This version feels more me though, more emotive and I felt like there was a wall between me and the painting. It was the wall of ‘design language’ and ‘making it look good’ that is bubbling up from my advertising past. This feels more authentic.

Added the very base of where the snakes will sit

NEXT PIECE INSPIRATION

Moodboard of these symbols

Along with the works of Hilma Klint and taking inspiration from the Voynich Manuscript visually, I want to use symbolism from books such as ‘Women who run with wolves’ and the most recent text I’ve read ‘addiction to perfection’.

KEY SYMBOLS

1. The Demon Lover – Represents the inner critic, toxic perfectionism, and the pursuit of an unattainable ideal.

Healing: Recognizing its false promises and embracing imperfection.

The Demon Lover

Arthur Hughes

Rama Spurns the Demon Lover

(‘Rama Spurns the Demon Lover’, 1913. )

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Warwick Goble

2. The Body (The Starving Body) – Symbolizes disconnection between body and soul, manifesting in eating disorders or numbness. Healing: Reconnecting with the body’s wisdom.

3. The Hollow Woman – A woman who has lost connection to her soul and intuition in pursuit of perfection.

Healing: Reclaiming inner life and embracing imperfection.

4. The Wise Old Woman (Crone) – Represents deep feminine wisdom that comes from accepting life’s imperfections.

Healing: Learning self-trust and intuition.

Crones. © Asma Istwani

Old Woman Seen from Behind,
by Vincent van Gogh.

5. The Clockwise Spiral – Symbolizes external growth, structure, and order. Potential danger: Leading to burnout if disconnected from inner self.

6. The Counterclockwise Spiral – Represents deep inner transformation, dismantling old identities for rebirth.

7. The Chrysalis / Butterfly – Transformation from suffering to wholeness, requiring patience and surrender.

Maria Sibylla Merian, 1679

8. The Snake – Represents the body’s wisdom and feminine instinct, urging trust in intuition.

9. The Moon – A feminine symbol of intuition, cycles, and accepting change.

10. The Ocean / Water – Represents deep emotions, surrender, and the unconscious.

11. The Dark Night of the Soul – The necessary crisis before transformation, requiring faith in the process.

12. The Black Madonna – Symbolizes the rejected deep feminine power, intuition, and sensuality.

13. Fire – Represents purification, destruction, and transformation of false perfectionist ideals.

14. The Womb – A sacred space for inner gestation, emphasizing patience before external action.

15. The Golden Shadow – Represents repressed positive traits such as joy, creativity, and spontaneity.

16. The Voice of the Soul – The inner truth often suppressed in perfectionism.

SYMBOLS WITHIN THE TALES

1. The Handless Maiden – Represents a woman’s loss of power due to external control, requiring reclaiming her soul.

Celeste Woods

2. The Fisher King Wound – A culture’s loss of the sacred feminine, needing restoration of balance.

3. The Bridegroom Who Would Not Eat – Represents the starving soul in perfectionism, urging self-nourishment.

4. Bluebeard – Symbolizes the destructive Demon Lover who kills women’s creativity, requiring rejection of perfectionism.

Bluebeard illustration by Guillon for an edition of the tales by Charles Perrault published in Paris in the late 19th century

5. Lady Macbeth– Used to discuss the destructive pursuit of power and perfection. She interprets Lady Macbeths actions as embodying negative aspects of the feminine psyche when it is disconnected from it’s nurturing qualities

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

1889, John Singer Sargent

Each symbol represents a step in the journey from perfectionism to wholeness, urging the balance of feminine wisdom
with external achievement.