(60” x 48”) Oil on canvas 2024-2025
This painting arose from my lifelong struggle with severe menstrual pain and a longing to transmute my prolonged suffering into a visual narrative of healing and empowerment. After years without medical answers, this piece became an alchemical ritual initially created to transform my pain into healing. However, as the work progressed, it grew into something far wider in scope. I recognized that the feminine energy within all of us is wounded, and that its healing is essential for our collective evolution into a higher state of consciousness.
The earth goddess Gaia functions as the principal symbol of the feminine archetype. She embodies the woman in pain, the anima within men, and the Earth itself. I wanted her eyes veiled to represent those who have felt unseen. With her identity concealed, she becomes a mirror capable of representing anyone.
I also challenged myself artistically by drawing inspiration from the Old Masters. While the subjects are portrayed in a classical style, they are meant to be expressions of abstract concepts given physical form. The archangels, for example, are supposed to represent specific angelic energies depicted in a Renaissance aesthetic rather than a literal portrayal of how they would actually appear. Every element was intentional, from angelic healing symbols embedded in the background to the sigils of the archangels engraved on their pins. This was implemented so that the angelic energies would be invoked.
At the very bottom of the artwork is the Ana BeKoach, the 42-letter Name of God, inscribed in Hebrew. This prayer, from what I was told, is regarded as one of the most powerful in existence and is believed to bring forth miracles. Additionally, I instinctively incorporated menstrual blood from one of my most painful episodes into the red oil paint used for the blood depicted on the canvas. A tribute to the Three of Swords in tarot is also reinterpreted here as three swords piercing a uterus rather than a heart, symbolizing the heavy, intense pain and psychological distress my menstrual cycle has been causing me all this time. I incorporated plague doctors in the lower dark corners to symbolize the modern medical industry and humanity’s continued residence in a dark age of medicine, in this instance, regarding women’s health.
According to the Yuga Cycle and various prophecies, the Earth is currently transitioning into a new aeon and undergoing a process of purification. In Ayurvedic medicine, a woman’s menstrual cycle is also understood as a form of purification. Through the rhythmic flow of apana vayu, the downward moving energy, women are able to release excess and disorder without becoming impure. We receive and consume without energetically hoarding, therefore purifying whatever we receive through this bloodshed. It is not that menstrual blood is a sign of impurity, but rather it is a sacred discharge of excess and disorder, which keeps a woman balanced. It clears space for creation, culminating in the fertile openness of ovulation. Historically, menstrual blood has been revered and used in tantric and magical practices, though it has long been misunderstood and stigmatized.
I see the chaos and disorder of our planet today in much the same way. The old structures that no longer serve us must break down in order for balance to be restored and new life to arise. I personally saw the year 2020 as the collective enduring a severe menstrual upheaval on Earth metaphorically speaking, which to me was an apparent initiation into this transformation. The demons orbiting the womb of Gaia symbolize the darkness present in our world, while the light cast upon the Earth represents the exposure and destruction of that darkness.
Feminine energy is currently rebalancing itself, and this process is deeply inward. Humanity has been fixated on the external for far too long. As individuals commit to their own healing, the collective consciousness rises alongside them. Based on the various elements I incorporated, my intention was that the more people who come across this painting, the more power it gives this painting energetically as a mirroring effect for our own healing and collective reality. As above, so below. As within, so without. This painting is meant to show that by acknowledging our wounds, we can begin not only to heal ourselves, but the world around us.
