Dear Hilma,

I have made this painting on copper for you. It began with a tarot reading I received in Paris from another female artist. I only realised the possibility of turning my reading into a painting after viewing The Ten Largest, the paintings you produced from your seances with The Five. Seances opened your practice to the possibilities beyond your conscious understanding and spurred the creation of some of the earliest examples of abstraction. I wonder if these secret meetings included the use of tarot? This use of process to side-step the limitations of conscious decision making resonated with me on a number of levels. Namely my own copper process, where colour compositions become heavily influenced or guided by the alchemical reactions of my pigments in response to the temperamental nature of my copper support. I have to ultimately relinquish control over my medium to its own will.

The three cards I drew in order were La Lune (the moon), La Force (Strength) and Le Monde (The world). I learned tarot was an early form of symbolism, with the earliest recorded decks dating back to Italy in the 15th century. Everything has a specific symbolic meaning. From colour to the direction of a figures gaze, which when contextualised by the order in which the cards are drawn can create a kind of story. I learnt how you interpret this personally, like in art and your own work, it becomes highly subjective as we feel our own unconscious truths. When the various symbolic associations of my Paris reading were explained to me and read together, I perceived a very intimate portrayal of my artistic journey up to that point. It forecast a transition in my practice I was in the midst of, as Le Monde being the last card represented the closing of one cycle and the beginning of a new one.

I started this painting with La Lune. I noticed the sun from the original card, resembled the sun in ‘Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece’, (1915). The warm burnished (red to yellow) sunlight, represents the conscious mind and the masculine. This light is reflected in the moon who obscures the former in an eclipse. The cool bluish light of the moon represents the subconscious mind and the feminine. The light of the moon and the sun together in my work form a kind of green circular band of light. I noticed this colour symbolism present in both your work and tarot. This green circular band travels down to form the meeting place between two circles. The shape of this becomes the opening of Le Monde, the opening of the world, the shape an abstract rendering of female anatomy. The circle on the left is bathed in moonlight just before the sun rises and represents the subconscious mind. The circle on the right is bathed in early morning sunlight and represents the conscious mind. Set at that moment of daybreak between day and night. Between male and female. The disappearing horizon of a body of water crosses both circles and the intersection between them. Water is often associated with the unconscious mind.

The composition I’ve just described is a painting within a painting. In front of this painting sits a figure on the bare floorboards of a studio floor. Her head rests in the almond space between the two circles. Clothed in blue, she wears a burnished necklace with the claws of a crustacean. A crustacean comes from the water which represents the unconscious mind, however in being a burnished red it adopts the colours of the conscious mind. This parallels the way our conscious understanding of self and the ego forms from the unconscious. This painting explores this point of creation, and that magical moment when you make art between the unconscious and conscious as the world opens up with new surprising possibilities. The painting also charts the shift between representation and abstraction. As we move past the figure sitting on floorboards, into symbolism (the moon and the sun) and finally past the horizon into abstraction.

Yours truly,
Natasha