"An Ode to Sovereignty & Sacred Listening"
Circe
There is a story that has always lingered at the edges of myth - the story of Circe, the so-called Witch of Aeaea. In most tellings, she is cast as a seductress, a manipulator, a woman to be feared. But author Madeline Miller’s retelling of Circe invites us to see her differently: not as a villain, but as a woman in exile, learning the language of the earth and the ocean, carving out her sovereignty through deep listening and relationship.
FINALIST
FINALIST
CIRCE IS CURRENTLY A FINALIST IN THE NATIONAL EMERGING ART PRIZE 2025. To purchase this painting, please see the prize page here.
Founded in 2021, the National Emerging Art Prize was established to provide a highly visible national platform to identify, promote and
support Australia’s most promising emerging visual and ceramic artists. The prize exists not only to offer a robust and highly visible platform to showcase artists in the emerging stages of their careers but also to furnish the winners and runners-up with a significant cash prize and a suite of non-cash prizes to further support their practice and to provide a pathway to a long-term art career and representation.
Myth and story can help us to understand who we are and how we might reimagine ourselves and the world. This painting is a prompt for re-enchantment, inner reflection, story-making, and renewed relationship with the Land. Informed by author Madeline Miller’s retelling of the myth of Circe, this painting offers a re-visioning of the so-called ‘Witch of Aeaea’, not as a villain but as complex, tender, and powerful. Her journey into self-discovery and reciprocal relationship with Nature resonates as an archetype for reclaiming one’s voice and magic.
This painting was born from Circe’s world. It references her tides, her plants and her magic that grows not from domination, but from connection. I imagine her standing barefoot on the rocky island shore, speaking to the wind, listening to the hum of roots beneath her feet. She becomes powerful not because she controls the world around her, but because she listens.
Circe reminds us that magic is not always spectacle. Sometimes it is quiet. Sometimes it is simply presence and a willingness to be changed by the world as much as we seek to change it.
When I painted her, I thought about the ways we all exile ourselves (or find ourselves exiled) in order to hear our own voice more clearly. I thought about how we are asked to return differently than we left: wiser, softer, more certain of who we are.