Eight of Swords I, painted in 2022 with a 2024 addition, inspired by a journal exercise and tarot card that's about evaluating our own mindsets and self-limiting beliefs. Often, the only real expectations of us are the ones we place on ourselves. Our anxiety is self-perpetuating.

"The Eight of Swords shows a woman bound and blindfolded. Eight swords surround her, seemingly trapping her in place, a symbol of the limiting thoughts, beliefs and mindset that prevent her from moving forward in her life. However, look closer: if the woman removed her blindfold, she would quickly realise that she can escape..."

Symbolically removing the blindfold, she chooses to step out of the confines she has constructed for herself, moving from the dark into the light. Choosing to move from a place of illusion into disillusionment - in the positive sense. Why would we want to live in an illusion?

It may feel safer and more comfortable.

It's not easy to free our own minds from our self-imposed big brother mindsets; the controls we place on ourselves are often for self-preservation. And getting out of our own heads and trusting more in our guts and intuition can be scary.

The truth is, our guts are our more ancient and evolved instincts. Reason and rationality, the thinking, logical mind, came much later. Knowledge is older than that.

We just sometimes forget that we are more free than we think we are.

Painting is my favourite reminder of that.

#eightofswords #viiiofswords #tarot #expressionism #portraiture #acryliconcanvas #painting #freedom #southafricanart #southafricanartist #selfportrait

Essentially a self-portrait the woman represents the psyche, holding the red ribbon blindfold as if a sword, empowered in her truth.

Painting is expressionist with a tarot style ink & acrylic illustration fixed onto the surface.