Why I Keep Returning to Myth
I return to myth-inspired drawings not because I want to retell ancient stories, but because myth never stopped happening. Archetypes are not relics of the past. They are patterns of emotional experience that continue to surface, regardless of time period or culture. In my work, myth functions less as narrative and more as structure. It offers a way to organise feeling when language becomes insufficient.
Archetypes as Emotional Blueprints
Archetypes persist because they describe inner realities that repeat across lives. The guardian, the threshold figure, the wounded one, the fertile body, the silent witness. These are not characters I invent. They are emotional positions that people recognise instinctively. When I draw archetypal forms, I’m not illustrating mythology. I’m mapping emotional roles that continue to exist beneath modern identity.
Why Archetypes Appear in Contemporary Drawing
Contemporary life often fragments identity. We move quickly between roles, environments, and emotional registers. Archetypes offer continuity inside that fragmentation. In my drawings, archetypal figures appear because they stabilise experience. They provide recognisable shapes for emotions that otherwise feel diffuse. The drawing becomes a place where inner states can gather and take form.
Myth Without Literal Storytelling
I’m not interested in literal mythological imagery. My drawings rarely reference specific gods or named figures. Instead, they work through posture, repetition, symmetry, and symbolic gesture. A body merged with roots suggests fertility and endurance. A mirrored face suggests duality or initiation. These signals operate beneath conscious decoding. Mythic logic functions through recognition rather than explanation.
The Body as Archetypal Site
In my work, the body is often the primary carrier of archetype. It stretches, transforms, duplicates, or merges with natural elements. This reflects how archetypes live in the body rather than the intellect. Fear, protection, desire, grief, and transformation are somatic experiences before they are ideas. Drawing allows these embodied patterns to surface visually.
Cultural Memory and Shared Recognition
Archetypes persist because they are embedded in cultural memory. Across different traditions, similar forms appear again and again: the mother body, the hybrid creature, the sacred plant, the watcher. When viewers respond to these images, they often do so without knowing why. Recognition happens before interpretation. My drawings rely on this shared emotional literacy rather than specific references.
Archetypes as Living Forms, Not Fixed Symbols
I don’t treat archetypes as fixed meanings. In my drawings, they are fluid and adaptive. A figure can carry protection and vulnerability at the same time. A plant form can suggest both growth and entrapment. This flexibility matters. Archetypes survive precisely because they evolve. They absorb new contexts while retaining their core emotional logic.
Why Myth Feels Relevant Again
There is a renewed interest in myth today, not as fantasy, but as orientation. In times of uncertainty, people turn toward symbolic systems that offer depth without prescription. Myth-inspired drawings function in this space. They don’t explain how to live. They reflect how it feels to live through change, loss, desire, and becoming.
Drawing as a Mythic Medium
Drawing is particularly suited to mythic expression because it allows ambiguity to remain intact. Unlike narrative forms, drawing doesn’t require resolution. It can hold contradiction, repetition, and silence. This makes it ideal for archetypal content, which rarely resolves cleanly. The drawing becomes a visual echo rather than a statement.
Archetypes and Psychological Safety
Contrary to assumptions, archetypal imagery often creates psychological safety. Familiar patterns reduce the fear of the unknown. When an image resonates on an archetypal level, it feels held within something larger than personal experience. In my work, this sense of containment is essential. The drawing doesn’t isolate emotion. It situates it.
Why These Drawings Feel Timeless
Myth-inspired drawings often feel timeless because they are not anchored to trends. They draw from emotional structures that predate style. Even when the visual language is contemporary, the underlying logic feels ancient. This combination allows the work to exist between eras, neither nostalgic nor futuristic.
Persistence as Emotional Necessity
Archetypes persist not because cultures preserve them deliberately, but because they are needed. They reappear whenever humans face similar emotional thresholds. My drawings engage with this persistence not as homage, but as participation. Each image becomes another instance of an ongoing conversation between inner life and shared symbol.
When Drawing Becomes Continuation
For me, myth-inspired drawing is not about referencing the past. It is about continuing a visual language that never fully disappeared. Archetypes endure because they still speak. Drawing is one of the quiet ways they keep doing so, adapting, shifting, and remaining recognisable even as everything else changes.
