The Handless Maiden: Myth, Transformation, and the Slow Magic of Painting
The Handless Maiden
Acrylic on canvas
101 × 101 cm
(2025)
The painting The Handless Maiden draws from a well-known European folktale in which a young woman is harmed and exiled, her hands severed by her father’s bargain with a dark power. Alone, she flees into the forest, stripped of her former life. Over time, she finds refuge in the natural world, and through her deepening relationship with the Land, she is transformed. In many (and my) versions of the story, her hands are restored, symbolising a return not to innocence, but to a hard-earned, embodied wisdom.
This narrative resonates across time because it speaks to a universal pattern: loss, wandering, and eventual renewal. The Handless Maiden is a potent figure for those who have endured rupture and found themselves reshaped by it. As a mythic archetype, she reminds us that transformation is not a neat process but one that often begins in absence and disorientation.
The painting reflects these themes materially and symbolically. Its surface is layered with pigment, built up over weeks to create a depth that changes under shifting light. Colours seem to flicker between opacity and translucence, echoing the myth’s movement between shadow and revelation. This technique encourages a slower form of looking (an invitation to linger, notice, and reflect).
The Handless Maiden forms part of my exhibition Mythic Ground: New Stories for Old Lands, a body of work reimagining ancient mythologies through a contemporary lens. By exploring these archetypal narratives through abstract painting and sculpture, I aim to create works that not only honour the myths but also offer viewers a mirror for their own lives and cycles of becoming.
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