Doll Snakes
oil on canvas
110 x 110 cm
2011
Doll Snakes
Between Stillness and Becoming
A lone doll-like figure stands upright, her long hair unraveling into serpentine filaments that coil and weave around her head like an enigmatic, otherworldly halo. In Doll Snakes, this spectral feminine presence confronts the viewer with a gaze both direct and elusive — at once fragile and unwavering, composed yet charged with an unsettling tension. Rendered in a cool palette of blues and whites, delicately suffused with whispered gradations of fuchsia and lavender, the composition evokes the timeless themes of mythic transformation and internal psychological conflict.
The painting reimagines the figure of Medusa not as a monstrous outcast, but as a liminal doll poised between stillness and awakening. The serpentine strands that crown her head suggest nerves, dreams, or living thoughts — shifting symbols that blur the boundaries between the corporeal and the psychic, the animate and the symbolic. This mutable identity captures the flux of the feminine psyche, caught in the throes of becoming, unraveling, and reassembly.
Through its surreal ambiguity and charged symbolic tension, Doll Snakes speaks to the fragile, constructed nature of selfhood and the complexities of feminine subjectivity. It situates itself within a contemporary discourse of visionary figuration and mythopoetic narrative, inviting viewers to reconsider archetypal stories through a lens of vulnerability and power.
For collectors and curators drawn to evocative, psychologically rich imagery, Doll Snakes holds its space with quiet intensity — a haunting meditation on transformation, identity, and the shadowed spaces of the soul. It is a work both arresting and strange, unforgettable in its poetic ambiguity and emotional depth.