Colour as Elemental Emotion
When I work with Tarot colour, I always feel that each hue carries elemental weight. Fire, water, air, and earth are not abstract categories for me; they become emotional forces that shape how a composition breathes, expands, contracts, or settles. Colour becomes elemental architecture, guiding the viewer’s emotional experience before any symbol is consciously recognized. Through atmospheric gradients, glowing seeds, and botanical guardians, these elements transform into a visual language that feels instinctive and embodied.
Fire: Ember Glow and Manifestation
Fire appears in my work not as aggressive flame, but as ember glow, a quiet heat that pulses beneath velvet blacks. In Tarot, fire corresponds to the suit of Wands, associated with desire, will, and creative spark. I interpret this energy through crimson haze, burnt sienna textures, and soft radiance that feels like internal ignition. Slavic rituals once used glowing coals to bless new ventures, treating fire as both destructive and fertile. When I introduce warm tones into a composition, I am invoking that lineage. The colour becomes a signal of manifestation, the moment when intention condenses into visible form. Fire in my emotional portraiture expresses movement, agency, and transformative heat without overwhelming the viewer.
Shop my bright art poster "JUST A PHASE"
Water: Misty Blues and Emotional Depth
Water reveals itself through misty blues and tidal gradients, dissolving boundaries between figure and atmosphere. Tarot links water to the suit of Cups, the realm of feeling, intuition, and relational openness. In Mediterranean traditions, blue pigments protected sailors from emotional and literal storms, connecting the hue to resilience and inner calm. When I allow blue haze to soften edges, the composition becomes fluid, inviting the viewer into reflective quiet. Water in my work creates spaciousness, where memories and emotions drift like currents beneath the surface. It is not sentimental softness, but depth shaped by ebb and flow, allowing emotional truth to emerge gradually.
See my emotional art print "EMBRYO"
Air: Pale Light and Breath
Air expresses itself through pale illumination, subtle highlights, and ethereal gradients that feel weightless. In Tarot, air corresponds to the suit of Swords, often misunderstood as purely intellectual. For me, air represents breath, clarity, and movement of thought. Baltic folklore associated dawn winds with revelation, believing that insights arrived with the first morning breeze. I translate this through gentle diffusion of light, silvery shadows, and delicate botanical lines that resemble wind-blown stems. Air becomes the element that lifts the composition, creating openness and conceptual clarity without stripping away emotional richness. It introduces mental sharpness, but softened through dream-coded atmosphere.
Explore my dreamy art poster "SPIRIT OF LIGHT"
Earth: Green Shadows and Rooted Presence
Earth manifests through green shadows, mossy tones, and grounded textures. The suit of Pentacles in Tarot often relates to material reality, but I treat earth as emotional grounding rather than physical weight. Rowan branches in Slavic lore protected households, marking the boundary between inner safety and external threat. Moss and fern imagery signal slow, steady growth, thriving in hidden places. When I incorporate deep greens and textural grains, the artwork gains rooted presence, allowing other elements to unfold securely. Earth becomes the base layer, emotional soil where seeds of transformation rest before emerging.
Order my raw art print "Virginia & Vita"
Elemental Interaction and Surreal Atmosphere
The true power of Tarot colour emerges when elements interact. Fire against earth creates fertile warmth, while water dissolves rigid structures formed by air. In my surreal compositions, gradients shift from green shadows into ember glow, or from lunar blue into pale illumination. These transitions mirror emotional cycles: grounding, activation, release, reflection. The viewer feels movement across internal landscapes, even when the imagery remains still. Symbolic maximalism helps me build these layered atmospheres, ensuring that each colour contributes to emotional architecture rather than acting as ornament.
Botanical Guardians as Elemental Symbols
Botanical forms reinforce elemental meaning. Thorned curls carry fire’s protective intensity, while night-flowers evoke water’s secret blooming. Air appears in delicate stems and seed dispersal, suggesting movement and breath. Earth reveals itself through roots and ferns, guardians of hidden knowledge in Baltic midsummer traditions. These motifs allow the elements to feel embodied, rooted in cultural lineage rather than abstract symbolism. The artwork becomes a living ecosystem where each botanical gesture supports elemental expression.
Purchase my botanical art poster "MARIA"
Elemental Portraiture and Archetypes
When I create emotional portraiture inspired by Tarot, I rarely depict faces in a literal sense. Instead, I allow colour and element to form the emotional identity of the piece. A composition dominated by ember glow and thorned curves may express the decisive energy of the Magician, while deep greens and glowing seeds evoke the nurturing sovereignty of the Empress. Misty blues and pale light suggest the reflective depth of the High Priestess, and earthy structures reflect grounded resilience found in figures like the Hierophant. Colour becomes personality, shaping archetypal presence through emotional resonance rather than representational form.
Why the Four Elements Endure in My Work
The four Tarot elements continue to inspire me because they mirror lived experience. Emotion ignites, dissolves, clarifies, and roots itself in cycles that feel universal. By translating these processes through colour, texture, and botanical metaphor, I can express complexity without literal narrative. Each time I return to fire, water, air, and earth, they reveal new nuances, reminding me that emotional evolution thrives in the interplay of heat and depth, breath and grounding. For internal linking, this connects naturally to themes explored in my colour psychology and botanical symbolic posts, expanding the emotional vocabulary of my work.
