Garden — Winter —
On making art from a place of coldness, searching and return
There are seasons in life when everything we thought we were begins to dissolve. For me, Garden – Winter – was born out of one of those seasons — a long stretch of coldness that I didn’t choose, but had to pass through in order to find myself again.
When I carved this piece, I had just left my previous life behind: my city, my partner, my profession. For many years I had followed the path expected of me — by family, by society, by the version of myself that wanted to be “good,” responsible, reliable. I worked hard. I performed. But inside, something small and essential was dying.
The truth is that my heart had wanted something else all along: a life shaped through art, colour, courage. From childhood, my inner world was vivid — drawings, stories, symbols, diaries that combined words and images. For years, that girl got forgotten, together with her memory of a dream.
Winter came when I could no longer ignore that lost piece. It was not a choice. Winter felt like standing outside the current of life — misaligned, frozen, stuck in a void. My nervous system collapsed under the weight of change. A big part of me craved clarity in my sense of identity.
Garden – Winter – emerged from that place.
The image is simple at first glance: a cherub figure at the edge of a garden, a turbulent sky overhead, a figure overshadowing the garden. I found ways to link the feelings with their figurative and symbolic expressions. The cherub is the inner child — the keeper of one’s true desires, the guardian of authenticity and play. The garden is the inner world. In that image: asleep, wintering. The great shadow is not a not an enemy — it is a protector, but one that also kept me small, safe and silent.
The shadow is fear, longing, reluctance. But it is also a part of me that needs to be accepted, integrated, grounded.
When I started carving, I felt excitement — the kind that comes from knowing that the printed image will surprise you, because linocut always mirrors back the truth you didn’t intend to carve. But there was also discomfort, a sense that I was doing something that might bring something dark into the physical world. As someone who naturally gravitates toward positivity, toward offering something good and warm through my art and the way of being, this feeling was unsettling.
Yet I kept going. Deeper and further into the process, ink, press, dirty fingertips. Something in me knew the image needed to exist. I needed to see it outside myself before I could internalise it, before it would reveal its meaning. I needed to listen to the whispers of my subconscious to heal.
Printing it was an act of surrender. And once it appeared on paper, I could finally grasp it: this artwork is not about despair. It is about recognition. It is about acknowledging the shadow in order to move beyond the coldness it creates. The High Priestess figure — an archetype I resonate with deeply — knows that wisdom comes from looking inward, even into the darkest chambers of the self.
Garden – Winter – is a landscape of that inner process: the moment when innocence meets its counterpart shadow, when longing meets resistance, when the inner garden waits patiently beneath the frost for the warmth of the sunshine.
I hope this piece speaks to people who are already aware of the forces at work within their souls — people who reflect on their emotions, their psychological wiring, their mind patterns. And also to those who, like me, have spent too long in winter.
If that is you, I want to say:
You are not alone.
We all face our winter, at one point or another.
Don’t let yourself remain stuck there for too long.
You need courage to face your shadow — because it is the one standing between you and your own alignment. Once you step towards it, the path opens. The garden begins to flourish. And the piece of your soul that felt lost may simply be waiting for you to return.