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Dancing Spirits Through Paint

At the heart of this work lies an exploration of two deeply entwined themes: the tension between control and release, and the struggle to remain spiritually connected while navigating a materialistic, industrial world. Rooted in personal experience and influenced by Jewish mysticism—particularly the myth of the dybbuk—the work grapples with inherited trauma, mental health, and the pull between ancient wisdom and contemporary disconnection. Through gestural mark-making, destruction, and intuitive expression, the practice becomes a means of healing and liberation. This journey reached a pivotal moment during a psychedelic experience in Switzerland. Immersed in awe and disorientation, black, morphing shapes began to appear—like calligraphic, totemic figures—felt as sacred and alive.

These shapes, frantic and insistent, were sketched obsessively, as if trying to translate a divine code. Channelling shapes from another realm to the canvas They were the ‘dancing spirits’: lost and cut off from their source, yearning to be reunited, channelling their code upwards, receiving no response. Desiring closeness and unity with a higher source, yet doomed to remain trapped and locked in the material world. This mirrored the artist’s sense of spiritual exile.Though frustratingly elusive in form, these symbolic spirit shapes began appearing everywhere—in everything natural, like looming totemic structures across the earth. They formed a kind of writing in the sky, an interlocking code that spoke of something ancient and ever-present, waiting to be tapped into. They became a metaphor for the soul itself: seeking, reaching, coded, unseen—yet always there.

© 2025 by Isali Arielle

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