A Symbol Older Than Nations
Across the vast Indo-European world — from Baltic forests to Greek islands, from Celtic hills to Vedic plains — the serpent appears as one of the oldest and most complex mythic figures. It survives in stories, folk rituals, protective charms, and cosmological myths that long predate written language. The serpent is never singular: it can be guardian or destroyer, healer or deceiver, feminine energy or masculine force, earthly creature or cosmic pillar. This duality is precisely what keeps it alive across cultures.
In my work, I return to this layered symbol not through literal illustration but through emotional reinterpretation — borrowing the serpent’s fluidity, multiplicity, and mythic weight to explore contemporary feelings of transformation, danger, and renewal.
The Serpent as Boundary-Keeper
In many Indo-European traditions, the serpent guards thresholds: doorways, springs, sacred groves, family homes. Lithuanian folklore speaks of the žaltys, a household serpent spirit seen as a blessing. In Greek myth, serpents coil around temples and healing sanctuaries. In Celtic traditions, serpentine spirals mark borders between the material and the unseen.
This idea of “boundary guardian” appears in my art through shapes that circle, enclose, or curve protectively around faces and botanicals. Instead of literal coils, I use looping stems, curved silhouettes, and rhythmic outlines that behave like serpentine borders — forming intimate emotional enclosures inside the artwork.
The Serpent as Healer and Life-Giver
Long before it became a medical emblem, the serpent was linked to healing and regeneration. Many Indo-European cultures believed serpents carried knowledge of herbs, earth, and rebirth. Their ability to shed skin made them metaphors for renewal, cycles, and feminine inner strength.
I reimagine this regenerative aspect through repetition, layering, and colour transitions. Soft gradients, doubled faces, and botanical expansions echo the idea of shedding, regrowth, and cyclical becoming. The serpent’s healing is transformed into my visual language of quiet metamorphosis.
The Serpent as Cosmic Force
Indo-European mythologies often place serpents at the centre of creation or destruction. Vedic stories describe the battle between Indra and the cosmic serpent Vṛtra. Norse myth holds Jörmungandr, the world serpent circling the oceans. Greek stories speak of serpents tied to prophecy and divine knowledge. These are not creatures but cosmic principles — forces of tension, expansion, and dissolution.
This cosmic aspect enters my art not as mythic beasts but as emotional architecture. Elongated faces, stretched shadows, and looping botanicals behave like world-encircling forms. They suggest internal universes, emotional storms, or quiet inner battles. Myth becomes atmosphere rather than narrative.
The Serpent as Feminine Power
Indo-European folklore frequently associates the serpent with feminine energy — both feared and revered. The serpent becomes a symbol of intuition, concealed knowledge, seduction, transformation, and the cyclical nature of life. It is a creature of thresholds and mysteries, aligned with womb, earth, and underworld.
My portraits echo this feminine embodiment not through eroticism but through emotional subtlety: half-closed eyes, elongated necks, soft gradients, and symbolic florals that function like “serpent skins.” The women in my artworks hold the same layered duality — softness and danger, vulnerability and power, stillness and pulse.
Reimagining Ancient Motifs Through Contemporary Emotion
Rather than recreating folklore directly, I absorb the serpent’s symbolic qualities into the emotional structure of my images. Curves, spirals, stretched proportions, and rhythmic motifs act as modern serpent-forms. Colours shift like shedding skins. Shadows coil gently around the figure. Botanicals behave like serpentine guardians.
My work approaches myth not as distant heritage but as living atmosphere — a feeling rather than a story. The serpent becomes an emotional metaphor for what many of us experience today: self-reinvention, internal conflict, boundary-setting, and the tension between vulnerability and transformation.
A Myth That Still Breathes
The serpent endures in Indo-European folklore because it carries truths older than language — that life is cyclical, that healing is layered, that transformation can be both frightening and sacred. By reimagining this symbol within contemporary portraiture and surreal botanicals, I aim to show how ancient motifs still breathe inside us, shaping how we understand danger, resilience, and renewal.
The myths survive not because we repeat them, but because we continue to feel them.
