There’s a certain kind of darkness that doesn’t frighten — it comforts. It feels old, ancestral, and strangely familiar. In my paintings, that darkness isn’t a void but a landscape filled with rituals, symbols, and echoes of forgotten traditions. It’s the space where folklore meets the gothic: where myth and melancholy share the same language.
This intersection between the folkloric and the gothic has always fascinated me. Both are deeply rooted in emotion — one grounded in collective memory, the other in introspection. Folklore preserves what a culture feels; gothic art exposes what the soul hides. Together, they create a visual language that turns darkness into something sacred, even luminous.
Folklore as Ancestral Memory
In many cultures, folklore has been a way to preserve what could not be written — stories of the land, of spirits, of human longing. In Slavic and Baltic traditions, which often inspire me, darkness is not the enemy. It’s the soil from which life grows, the night that holds mystery, the space where transformation happens.
I often think of traditional embroidery, talismans, and pagan symbols — eyes against the evil, floral crowns for fertility, serpentine lines for protection. These ancient forms of visual storytelling were never merely decorative. They were acts of belief. To embroider a symbol or to paint a protective motif was to participate in a ritual — a way of speaking to forces larger than oneself.
When I paint, I return to that impulse. The process itself feels ritualistic: layers of color, repetition of patterns, symbols emerging and disappearing under new strokes. Each piece becomes a quiet invocation — an attempt to reconnect with something older than language.
The Gothic Dimension of Emotion
If folklore carries the collective, the gothic carries the personal. It’s the introspective half of the same equation — the way darkness reflects the human condition. Gothic art, whether in architecture, literature, or painting, has always been a way to confront emotion without sanitizing it. It embraces imperfection, decay, and intensity.
In my work, gothic sensibility comes through atmosphere and tone — through muted light, metallic reflections, and symbolic gestures. I’m drawn to contrasts: fragility wrapped in ornament, beauty entangled with unease. This emotional ambiguity is what gives the gothic its depth. It’s not about fear; it’s about intimacy with the unknown.
There’s something profoundly human about the gothic way of seeing — it accepts that beauty and sorrow, life and death, coexist within the same frame.
Symbolic Rituals in Darkness
Darkness, for me, is a stage for transformation. It’s where symbols gain weight and gestures become ceremonial. Eyes, serpents, flowers, and crosses often reappear in my paintings, each carrying layers of meaning — protection, rebirth, desire, faith. These are not fixed icons but living emblems that shift with mood and context.
I think of each painting as a ritual in itself. The repetition of certain motifs — the circular motion of a serpent, the blooming of a flower against shadow — becomes meditative. In folklore, repetition was a form of invocation; in art, it is a rhythm of meaning. Through these visual cycles, I try to capture how emotion transforms over time — how fear becomes tenderness, how solitude becomes insight.
The darkness in my works is not a background; it is an element of presence. It holds the light, contains it, and gives it shape. Just as in myths, where the night births revelation, darkness here becomes the medium of renewal.
The Aesthetic of the Sacred and the Strange
The folkloric gothic aesthetic thrives on contrasts — the sacred and the profane, the human and the mythical, the natural and the surreal. It borrows from religious iconography but subverts it; it draws from ritual but reimagines it through emotion. This duality allows the paintings to exist between worlds.
Botanical forms twist into halos; eyes glow like candles; faces appear half-beautiful, half-haunted. The compositions echo church frescoes and pagan carvings alike — an accidental meeting of faiths and instincts.
The influence of Slavic and Eastern European decorative arts runs deep here. Ornamental borders, symmetrical compositions, and muted palettes connect these works to ancestral craft traditions. But instead of precision, there is expression. Instead of piety, there is empathy.
Darkness as Renewal
In the modern world, darkness is often treated as something to eliminate — something uncomfortable. But in folklore and gothic art alike, it’s a space of becoming. It allows emotion to unfold without the pressure of light. It holds what cannot be seen clearly — mystery, grief, rebirth.
To live with dark art is not to live with sadness, but with presence. A painting filled with gothic florals and folkloric symbols doesn’t bring gloom; it brings atmosphere. It slows time, makes us aware of texture, memory, and silence.
That’s why I return to darkness again and again. It’s not an escape from light, but a way to understand it. The deeper the shadow, the more vivid the color that emerges from it. The darker the surface, the more meaning it can hold.
The Ritual of Seeing
Ultimately, to look at folkloric gothic art is to participate in a ritual of seeing — a slow, attentive gaze that reveals rather than consumes. The viewer becomes part of the ceremony, interpreting symbols intuitively, allowing emotion to unfold.
I think that’s why I love painting this way: it invites contemplation. It doesn’t offer clarity, but presence. It gives form to what we sense but cannot name.
In these works, darkness is not emptiness. It is memory. It is magic. It is the place where the past still breathes, and where beauty, even in shadow, continues to bloom.
