The Untamed Pulse of the Feminine
Feral femininity entered my work long before I found language for it. I felt it first as an atmosphere—an inner pulse that resisted refinement and refused to shrink itself. When I paint women as mythic figures, I’m not creating characters; I’m giving form to the parts of the feminine that society learns to contain. Feral femininity is not chaos. It is clarity without permission, softness that sharpens, intuition that refuses to be translated. It is the emotional wildness that lives beneath ritual, memory and instinct.
Women as Witches of Intuition
The witch is one of the first archetypes that shaped my symbolic universe. She is not a villain but a figure of autonomous knowing. When I paint these women, their botanical auras flicker like spells, and their mirrored petals act as sigils. They embody the kind of femininity that reads the world through sensation rather than logic. A witch in my work is a woman who listens to her own thresholds—her cycles, her darkness, her instinctive glow. She is not aligned with danger, but with unfiltered perception.
Sirens and the Seduction of Self
Sirens often appear in my symbolic language as forms that pull the viewer inward—not toward destruction, but toward the submerged self. Their gaze is not a trap but a mirror. When I give a portrait a siren-like intensity, I’m exploring the part of the feminine that seduces through truth rather than allure. A siren is emotionally magnetic because she refuses to dilute herself. She draws others closer by being entirely present in her own depth. In my compositions, she becomes the embodiment of emotional gravity.
Saints of Shadow and Light
The saint archetype in my work is not a figure of purity, but of duality. My saints often bloom from darkness, carrying luminous botanicals that seem to rise from within. Their halos are not declarations of perfection but symbols of endurance. These women hold paradox: vulnerability and strength, softness and refusal, devotion and rebellion. They embody a sacred tension that feels distinctly feral—a holiness that breathes in shadow, not above it.
Myth-Creatures of Feeling
Some of my female figures shift beyond archetype into something more ambiguous—myth-creatures made of emotion rather than legend. They have petals instead of masks, or eyes that open like flowers. Their bodies echo roots, wings or lunar curves. These hybrid forms allow me to express emotions that have no singular shape: longing, awakening, grief that glows, desire that coils, intuition that spirals. They carry the fragmented, raw, expanding quality of the inner self when it refuses containment.
The Wild Feminine as Botanical Force
Feral femininity lives easily inside botanical symbolism. Roots behave like memory. Petals resemble thresholds. Seeds pulse like secrets. When I give my female figures botanical bodies or glowing floral auras, I’m connecting them to the ancient understanding that nature and womanhood share a language of cycles, growth and rupture. The wild feminine grows even in darkness. She regenerates. She reflects myth while creating new myth. She is a garden and a storm.
Shadow as a Feminine Element
Darkness in my work is not danger—it is sanctuary. When I place my female figures inside shadowed atmospheres, I’m giving them space to breathe without spectacle. Shadow becomes the terrain where their feral traits surface: intuition, defiance, longing, knowing. In these muted fields, they are free to be contradictory. They can bloom or hide. They can call or remain still. Shadow becomes a landscape of authenticity rather than fear.
Why I Continue to Paint Feral Femininity
I return to feral femininity because it feels essential. It allows me to paint womanhood without reduction—to make room for emotional complexity, symbolic depth and mythic imagination. Through witches, sirens, saints and unnamed myth-creatures, I explore the multidimensional reality of the feminine self. These figures carry the instinctive parts of me, the ancestral echoes and the quiet rebellions. Feral femininity is a way of honouring the wildness that lives beneath the surface—a wildness that is not meant to be tamed but understood.
