The Alchemical Studio

The Alchemical Studio, palette monotype, oil on paper, mixed media, 20 by 30 cm, 2025.

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.