Mary Magdalene – From Archaeologist to Explorer

This painting didn’t start with a plan. It began as a small play, a quiet game with a few colors - violets, pinks, burgundies, and a touch of black. They blended softly, almost tenderly, until I suddenly threw in a few sharp strokes of red. That’s where it paused for a while, as if it needed to catch its breath.

When I came back to it, I felt the need to fill three rectangles with letters. I scattered them in all directions, letting them form words that matter to me - names of the people I love, and words like trust, hope, love, and commitment, written in different languages. Hidden but present, like little talismans pressed into the painting.

And then came an urge that surprised me: to cover everything with a color I don’t even like much - a heavy earthy brown. Over it, I began drawing circles, tracing their edges, scratching into the surface. It felt like layering secrets and at the same time insisting that they could not be completely erased.

At some point I caught myself laughing: if one day, far in the future, someone ever examined this canvas, how many hidden layers would they find? What stories would they unearth, one beneath the other? It was in that moment that I felt the shift - from being an archaeologist carefully digging up traces of the past, to an explorer stepping boldly into unknown territory.

And that’s when the title arrived: Mary Magdalene.Not something I chose deliberately, but something that simply came and stayed. She carries with her so many stories, so many contradictions - both earthly and spiritual, both hidden and revealed. Somehow, she mirrored what the painting had become.

Looking back, what started as a playful experiment with color turned into a layered journey: part confession, part mystery, part map. And in the end, it left me with the sense that paintings are never just surfaces - they’re living archives, holding everything we dare to hide in them.