Artist Statement
My paintings begin where psychology, spirituality and the esoteric meet, in those loosely defined borders where science stops being rigid and the spiritual is allowed back in. I read Carl Jung, study the symbols cultures have given to the soul, and let those ideas become images.
My current body of work, the series Magic Woman, explores women and their bond with the living world: with nature and with death, with what protects them, with what is ancestral, spiritual, psychological and social. I paint women because that is what moves through me, as a person and as a woman. Each figure is a guardian whose power lives beyond the physical, and many carry a shadow, not as something to fear but as something that walks behind them and keeps them safe.
I came to oil painting on my own in January 2026, after years of exploring ink, watercolor, acrylic and brush sketching in search of my medium. In oil, I found it. What began as intuition has become intention: each piece now grows from sketches, symbols and color studies. In technique I look to John Singer Sargent and the Impressionists, to the loose brushstroke that makes a painting feel like it is vibrating, alive.
Painting these women is my way of finding home within myself, and an invitation for the viewer to recognize the magic they already carry.
— May D