An alchemical collage
A sense of contact—with beauty, with colour, with the body, and with something within that feels quietly ready to be met.
“Create a collage that expresses the landscape of your current relationship with your body, not as it should be, but as it is now, in process, in movement, in transformation. Think of this as an alchemical landscape, one shaped by time, sensation, memory, and the quiet work happening beneath the surface.”
As I read the module application, I knew my collage was going to somehow be about the coast of Wales. It was still very near, in my body, in my memory, and in my imagination.
The two-month online course through the Center for Junian Studies was about psyche and soma, entitled “Embodied Individuation.” I had signed up almost immediately and, week by week, worked through some things. This is some of what I reflected on and wrote about for the third module, “Alchemical Collage: The Body as Landscape.”
What are the textures, colors, patterns? What elements are present? Is anything beginning to shift, to stir, to grow?
That blue sea—clear, open, rippling, glistening.
That different blue sky—softer, fading closer to the horizon, distant clouds.
The rugged cliffs and the dynamic coastline—stone blue/purple/greys, white water crashing where cliff and sea meet, the sound, the constant thrum of that sound.
The pastures—shades of green, textures prickly to wispy, shorn to overgrown, hedgegroves in between, setting boundaries, stone walls of ancient lines, and meandering paths.
Colorful meadows and wildflowers—fuchsia, blue, yellow, pink, white, violet, red.
Warm, enduring sunshine, so few clouds.
Seeking shade under blooming hawthorn trees.
The gentle sea breezes are alive and dynamic.
Wild and remote, a beautifully expansive landscape.
There’s a vibrancy, an aliveness, a dynamic, splashing of colors, and a myriad of patterns in the collage landscape. Sea and waves, wildflowers and pastures, cliffs and stones, paths and fences. The mysteries of the deep sea, the far-off distant lands, and the cosmic skies all converge. There are very few straight lines—just the horizon and the fence. Everything else has waves, curves, circles, and amorphous shapes. Somehow, this feels like my inner body landscape, one that I don’t show. One that I didn’t know existed.
The circular shape is like a portal into my inner body landscape, revealed to me. It has always been there, and is always changing, like a landscape does over time, throughout the seasons, and through deep time. It is spring in this collage landscape, the season when we walked the coast of Wales. Maybe something is becoming, emerging, and cyclical. What is it, exactly? What would it be if I showed this? Do I want to? What does that even mean? How would that happen, what does that look like, and does it matter? It’s not that I’m hiding it. I didn’t know it was there.
I loved working on this collage. I became somewhat obsessed. Not in perfection, but in curiosity. I stayed up late. It was the first thing I did when I got up. I couldn’t wait to finish it, to see what it would become. As an artist, I’m used to letting intuition guide me, and flowing in a way that whatever comes, comes. I wanted to keep working on it because it was so interesting to see how it was all unfolding and what was happening!
I also found myself tending to it, caring for it. Not in a fussy or perfectionist way, not even a tidy way, because I didn’t feel that. It was definitely caring and tending. How I cut each of the flowers out, how I cut all those petal shapes, how I arranged, and then rearranged, waiting for things to show me when I knew the shapes were in the way they wanted and needed to be. It’s a co-creative process. It reminded me a little of what Tasha said, my daily engagement in “the ritual of beauty” with clothes, make-up, jewelry, and grooming, just because I like to and it makes me feel good, not for anyone else or outside pressure.
Most surprisingly is that with my own art, I don’t work in color. I struggle with color, and my art is mostly black, white, and grays. And if I do work in color, the colors are muted and natural. Squares are often prevalent in my work, too. This collage is the opposite, and I love it! I really do. It makes me happy to see it, to have made it. And it was such a joy.
The one area where I added something that wasn’t a reference from the original photo is the turquoise blue and gold petal-like shapes on the upper right edge. I did that part last, giving it time to reveal what it wanted to be. That area, those shapes, are symbolic of water, emerging from both the lands near (and underground) and lands distant (the coastal headlands), and reaching and splashing up into the cosmic sky. Unconscious become conscious?
Reply from Tasha (Junian practitioner and moderator for the course):
“This is such a rich and evocative piece of work, both your collage and the way you’ve reflected on it. What comes through most clearly is a sense of contact: with beauty, with colour, with fluidity, with memory, with the body, and with something in you that feels quietly ready to be met. As I read, I found myself sensing the stirrings of an archetypal presence, one that brings with it vibrancy, delight, and a deep responsiveness to the world. It feels like the Lover, not in the romantic sense, but as the one who awakens the senses, who finds joy in colour, in texture, in rhythm and care. The way you describe the unexpected use of colour, the pleasure in cutting petals, arranging and rearranging with a kind of reverence, this is the Lover at work. The one who brings beauty not for display, but for nourishment. Not as performance, but as presence. That this part of you is emerging after a long stretch of working in greyscale, and doing so with such joy and curiosity, feels deeply significant. There’s a renewal happening here, of vitality, of feeling, of embodiment. And perhaps also, as you name so clearly, a question: what would it be if I showed this? Not necessarily to others, but to yourself. To let this inner landscape shape how you walk, dress, create, even how you rest. There’s something quietly transformative here. Thank you for letting us witness it.”
