Candles have historically been used in rituals of sympathetic magic – the belief that a symbolic object can manipulate a real-world effect through the principles of correspondence and imitation. I'm interested in the way that these beliefs, though esoteric in origin, also make their way into everyday behavior. The ritual of making a wish while blowing out a birthday candle demonstrates a desire to bring the unseen into being, to momentarily invest a common physical object with greater agency.
This series of drawings, titled Does Such a Luminous Secret Exist, is part of a body of work that combines everyday party materials, such as birthday candles and confetti, with esoteric symbology and forms of ritual magic. The drawings bring together elemental forces of earth (graphite), air (breath used to blow liquid pigment across the surface of the paper), fire (burnt candles) and water (watercolor paint), as birthday candles are arranged within ornate framing devices based on ornamentation found in historic magical illustrations.
This series of drawings, titled Does Such a Luminous Secret Exist, is part of a body of work that combines everyday party materials, such as birthday candles and confetti, with esoteric symbology and forms of ritual magic. The drawings bring together elemental forces of earth (graphite), air (breath used to blow liquid pigment across the surface of the paper), fire (burnt candles) and water (watercolor paint), as birthday candles are arranged within ornate framing devices based on ornamentation found in historic magical illustrations.
