Notes from the Alchemical Studio: On Spiral Bellies and Iris Thresholds

In the weeks before surgery -I had a parathyroidectomy, where they found some thyroid cancer metastases from the cancer I was treated for 20 years ago- I revisited three monotypes from way back that felt less like artworks and more like dreamscapes pressed into paper. One of them I left unfinished—a viridio piece. It felt like something that wasn’t done speaking.
I drew forward a lizard, belly curled around a spiral, with the sun blazing on its back. Above it, a figure tucked into the folds of a dark iris, like a cocoon. The whole composition felt like a threshold: a body caught in metamorphosis—suspended, mid-spell.
Returning to it these last few days, the layers deepened. The lizard’s spiral belly became a kind of core memory—or maybe a biological imperative—the way healing doesn’t follow straight lines. The iris petals opened more fully, embracing the figure not as a tomb but as a chrysalis. The sun—once a symbol of exposure—now feels like a crown.
There’s something about working on paper like this, where the texture speaks its own language. The scraping, smudging, and pressure become an alchemical record of becoming—as if the studio itself remembers the body that moved through it.
This piece, once too unresolved to name, now feels like it was never meant to be “finished” in the usual sense. It had to travel with me through time, pain, and healing—through some half-dreamed rite of passage. It reminds me that transformation isn’t always glorious. It’s often messy, cracked open, full of old weather and new seeds.
I titled it Spiral Weather.

There’s always curiosity that follows the making of a monotype — after the paper is lifted, the paint dries, and the gesture settles into paper. It’s there that something reveals itself, a figure, a sun, a spiral, a lizard. My reflections about these works come to the surface like these figures appear in my monotype: slowly, unpredictably, sometimes with wings.
The prints began as remnants — the residue of palette and pressure, accidental landscapes formed from what remained. And yet, something in them kept calling me back: I returned to them with paint and thought, with dream and memory and they began to speak a language both older and more intuitive than I expected. This space — between the raw material of image and the clarity of symbol — is where I started to take notes. Some are just murmurs, others declarations.
Alchemy, dream, grief, absurdity, the shadow of a lizard carrying the sun— they’ve all left footprints in this ongoing process. My writing, putting the cued reflections as words on paper, holds the echo of that journey, from the edge of the print.

Tree of Life from Fire (monotype):
"As without, so within, as above, so below, as the universe, so the soul."
It feels like we are living through a burning phase — old patterns and constructs reduced to ash. Systems like white patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism are being challenged, unraveling, erupting.
From an alchemical perspective — as interpreted by Jung — if we tend to this fire consciously, adding spiritual presence, earth connection, and attention to the inner life (instead of hubris, manipulation, or the objectification of others), then something new can be born from the fire’s white ash.
In this moment, in my own personal Splendor Solis, I ask:

• What gets reduced to ash?
  
• What grows from it?
  
• What do we tend — not just torch?
  
• And where is our own human spine of becoming in all this?
  

Tree of Life (Torso painting):
The torso in the torso painting is sprouting roots, seated on the old tree stump like it’s both emerging from and becoming the Tree of Life — braiding the body with the Earth. The roots as tendrils of memory, of pain maybe, but also reaching down for strength. It represents regrowth, rebirth, regeneration — the absence of a head makes the heart, belly, and earth-connection even louder. Like she’s listening inwardly, downward.

A torso grows from an ancient tree stump. A reminder that rebirth begins not at the top, but deep in the dirt, where roots twist and ache and grow. Archiving my work, I saw this painting again and finally knew how to title this: she is a Tree of Life. She also represents my memories, and pain, and regeneration. She is the feminine missing in the world — and in me. And from her, everything braids outward.
"Now grow hands, legs, feet, and a head to all of this. The heart is already there."

Alchemy, in both its historical and psychological sense, is the art of transmutation. While early alchemists sought to turn base metals into gold, Jung saw alchemy as a metaphor for the psyche’s evolution—a process of individuation where the self undergoes dissolution, purification, and rebirth.
This latest piece embodies that idea: layers of paint as strata of experience, each mark holding a residue of past gestures, decisions, and emotions. Here, painting is not merely representation but something more elemental—a space for psychological material to surface, a confrontation with the unknown, a working-through of inner energies until something new emerges.
In this sense, the work stands at the intersection of transformation, individuation, and embodiment—three forces that have shaped my practice as both an artist and before as a student of Psychosynthesis. Emerging through deep engagement with dreamwork, it feels like a prototype for my developing series, The Alchemy Studio. It also continues my long-standing exploration of the body as a site of transformation—a vessel for holding and containing, much like the alchemist’s flask or Jung’s concept of the Self.
From a Jungian perspective, this painting speaks to individuation—the integration of unconscious aspects into the whole self. The central figure, emerging yet partially obscured, suggests an ongoing process rather than a completed resolution. The red-haired, skeleton-like woman feels crucial—an embodiment of wisdom, ancestry, cycles, and initiation, a life force burning here—perhaps the energy of individuation itself. The smaller figure moving toward the womb space speaks to cycles of renewal, creation, and rebirth—both psychically and artistically.
Unlike painters who externalize energy in bold, immediate gestures, my approach is one of containment. Just as individuation unfolds over time, my paintings gestate within me, emerging when the work itself is ready. There is an embodied knowing that guides the process, an internal sense of when to push forward and when to let something settle. This parallels how transformation truly occurs—not in an instant, but through cycles of confrontation, integration, and deep listening.
In many ways, this work also marks an evolution of my Torso Series. The torso, unlike the face, carries a kind of anonymity, allowing it to serve as an archetypal space where personal and collective narratives intersect. A body without a face becomes a vessel—of memory, of experience, of transformation. Here, those themes extend beyond the physical form into something more fluid, where figures and spaces seem to merge. The Alchemical Studio, as a concept, holds this movement between containment and dissolution, between the known and the yet-to-emerge.
With this work as its prototype, The Alchemy Studio series will delve deeply into dream imagery, transformation, and the unseen forces shaping my artistic creation. It is an invitation to stay with tensions, to allow the process to unfold, and to trust that through painting, something essentially human is being revealed.
As I deepen my artistic engagement with alchemy and Jungian dream work , I can’t help but ask: if we, as individuals, can constantly work with our inner opposites, striving for integration and balance, would/could this have an effect  on societies that remain fragmented, violent, and driven by war and division? If transformation is the essence of human growth—if as mature human beings, we can transmute conflict into wholeness—why would collective structures resist this process? 
Perhaps, in this sense, painting is not just an inner process but also a form of resistance—a way of holding tensions rather than collapsing into destruction. In a world that often seeks to obliterate the ‘other,’ the artist insists on integration. However difficult, this work of transformation—on canvas and within ourselves—becomes an act of defiance, a quiet but potent counterforce to fragmentation. If individuation is truly a path toward wholeness, then it must extend beyond the self, into the world we shape together.

Why Do I Return to the Torso?
Originally, I sculpted the torsos for my series The Anatomy Lesson, a body of work inspired by a 16th-century anatomy textbook by Vesalius. One of its illustrations depicts a dissected female torso, exposing the genitalia for study. Vesalius viewed female genitalia as internal representations of male genitalia—a popular belief of his era that framed women as merely underdeveloped men. This notion underscored the lack of understanding and attention given to the female body in medical science, a gap I sought to address through my work.
My clay torsos have no head, no arms, no legs. Yet, I deliberately carved a prominently visible vagina—an act of reclamation. In contrast, a 17th-century copy of Vesalius’s textbook shows the vagina neatly excised from the illustration, replaced by a blank triangle. This inspired The Missing Triangle, one of my painted torso portraits.
Revisiting these works today, I see them as emblematic of the inequality that still permeates our societies. According to the UN’s Focus 2030 report from March 2024, achieving global gender equality at the current pace will take another 131 years. Through a contemporary lens, these torsos represent how women’s basic rights are continually being stripped away, eroded in every corner of the world.
This isn’t just a historical or artistic concern. A 2018 research report found that violence against women is a key predictor of whether a society is prone to violent conflict. As noted by Catalina Crespo-Sancho in this report on the World Bank Blog (Can gender equality prevent violent conflict?), gender equality is an essential factor in a country’s security and stability. Excluding women from participating in society increases the risk of instability. Gender equality isn’t just about justice or doing what’s right—it’s critical for economic development and conflict prevention.
Similarly, in The Role of Gender in Political Violence (in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 2020) Rose McDermott highlights how equality predicts societal stability. Gender equality isn’t an abstract ideal; it’s a tangible, measurable factor shaping our collective future.

The Figurines: A Visual Language
No Head =
No Intellect /
No Schooling /
No Critical Thinking /
No Vote /
No Voice
No Arms =
No Agency /
No Creativity /
No Participation
No Legs =
No Free Access to the Public Sphere /
No Freedom of Movement
Missing Triangle
Vagina = Taboo /
Suppression of women as Creator of Life/
No Bodily Integrity /
Dismissal of the Female Body

​The Result:
A Body Stripped of Meaning /
Objectified /
Ignored, Disqualified as a Source of Knowledge /
Measured, Judged, and Controlled by Patriarchy /
Forced into Prescribed Roles for Male and Female Bodies.
In Ways of Seeing (1972), John Berger argues that what we see is shaped by assumptions about truth, civilization, class, and gender. We don’t just look—we read the language of images. I imagine archeologists unearthing my clay figurines centuries from now. What might they infer about how our society viewed the female body?

The Call to Action: Hope is a Verb.
We have to keep protesting this inequity—actively, in every way possible. That means continuing to educate women and men about patriarchy, dominance, and inequality, and the profound effects these systems have on our lives and well-being.
I lean on Hannah Arendt’s words for inspiration, though she wrote them in a different context:
"Even in the darkest of times, we have the right to expect some illumination, and such illumination might come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span given to them." (Men in Dark Times, Hannah Arendt).

My article, Fleshed Out: Feminist Art for Now is out on REPHRASE.
​You can read the whole text here: www.rephrasemag.com/kunst-en-cultuur/fleshed-out-feminist-art-for-now?

In 2021, I began making a series of studies of the works of Velázquez. As I begun this particular work, which I then titled 'The Infante,' I reused a 2018 painting on linen that depicted the Statue of Liberty. Probably significant that I painted her over the Statue of Liberty also, considering the constraints on the freedom of women to carve their own futures I'm addressing here. I decided to repurpose the canvas, drawing inspiration from not only Velázquez (the wide peplum dress in La Infanta Margarita, portraits of her were sent to Vienna to inform Leopold of what his young fiancée looked like) but also from Klimt (the stance of Mäda Primavesi) and Camille Claudel (sculpture La Petite Châtelaine). Throughout this process, I wanted to explore the theme of the socialization of girls, incorporating elements from these artists to convey my message. It became more personal along the way.

The project evolved through several stages, with the first 'finished' stage featuring a girl, dressed in a yellow gown that reminded me of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 novel, "The Yellow Wallpaper," an important early work of American feminist literature for its illustration of the attitudes towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century. However, I felt that this image wasn't quite bold enough in what I wished to convey about my own youth's circumstances.  I then decided  to paint the background in red, which ultimately led to the final result.

To me, the painting unintentionally grew to feel like a self-portrait, even though the head is that of La Petite Châtelaine, a sculpture by Camille Claudel, who found herself confined in an asylum by her brother and never sculpted again. Perhaps I identify with that aspect of her as an artist who had her creative growth stunted. As a child, I experienced an isolated upbringing and was denied the opportunity to attend art school due to restrictive parenting. I was not allowed to play with other children or have friends over to our house. Despite receiving praise during an art class from a nun who encouraged me to nurture my talent, I was expected to pursue more conventional subjects for a stable career, which led me to study mathematics. I never rebelled against these constraints, the thought never even entered my mind.  

In the final work, I can find echoes of this upbringing. While I'm painted with an open mouth -screaming, shouting, singing?- there is no sound coming out, I remain silent. My inner world has always been vibrant and filled with color, as I spent my time reading, drawing, and teaching myself to paint at home. This was my refuge, a totally solitary path of self-discovery. No wonder I am still extremely introverted, while I'm just as much extravert in my paintings.

This work feels like such a good fit as book cover for Alice Miller's 'Drama of the Gifted Child' to me? I'd welcome such an offer~