The Journey
to Inner Voice

I am often asked when my interest in tarot began, and why I felt compelled to create these sculptures. It is a question that requires time and reflection, because there was no single moment of beginning or ending. There was no lightning strike, no sudden instruction. The process unfolded gradually, from within.

From an early age, I was drawn to mystery. As a curious child, I was fascinated by questions of origin and meaning: death, astrology, ancient civilizations, religious rituals, and the pyramids. I was always drawn to history and personal stories marked by emotional depth and lived experience, constantly asking myself why things existed as they did.

Early in life, I encountered astrology through a chart reading that, at the time, I could not fully recognize as my own. Many years later, rereading this same chart, I was struck by its accuracy. It described a life shaped by tension in youth, a delayed unfolding, challenges with language, and a profound need for self-expression through art. Creativity was not a choice; it was essential.

For many years, I worked in psychiatric care within a mental health hospital. Over time, however, I felt an increasing pull toward drawing and visual expression, which eventually led me to train as an art teacher. Around this same period, I moved from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, married, and became a mother of two. Tarot entered my life later, when I was invited to take a course.

Although I had never worked with tarot before, the moment I held the cards, something familiar returned. The images, symbols, colours, and figures spoke directly to my intuition. It felt like coming home to a world of art, philosophy, and inner knowing. Like pieces of a puzzle clicking into place, my experiences in psychiatry, my artistic practice, and my intuitive sensibility suddenly aligned.

I later undertook formal studies in tarot and related esoteric disciplines, allowing this intuitive recognition to deepen into lived knowledge. Tarot revealed itself to me not as a tool for prediction, but as a mirror—a house filled with reflections, where each card represents a phase of inner transformation. It became a language through which personal growth, shadow, and consciousness could be deeply seen and felt.

In astrology, my North Node lies in the ninth house—a position associated with the urge to bring one’s spiritual vision into the world. I experience this not as a theory, but as a deep inner knowing. It feels less like a conscious choice and more like a recognition of what must be done: to give form to a philosophy of life and to carry questions of meaning outward through creation.

The impulse for the Inner Voice series revealed itself through a profound spiritual experience. Light appeared unexpectedly from above, illuminating two elongated sculptures standing in shadow in my home. In that moment, an immediate realization arose: the Major Arcana asked to be brought into form. Their narrow, vertical presence revealed itself as the exact physical language through which these archetypes wished to exist. From that moment on, the Arcana began to seek embodiment. The impulse did not come from analytical planning, but from pure receptivity. The Major Arcana simply asked to be made visible.

The sculptures translate this inner world into physical form. They are long and vertical, shaped by archetype, number, element, and symbol. They are not illustrations of cards, but living presences. Each figure carries an inner truth that does not ask to be explained, only encountered.

Creating these works required complete surrender. I did not work from a rigid concept, but from a place of listening. Often, my hands knew what to do before my mind could grasp it. Any attempts to force a change onto a face or alter an expression were resisted by the material itself; my rational mind wanted to intervene, yet my hands refused. It took many years of sustained, solitary work and full dedication to realize each figure.

Much of this process unfolded in isolation. As an artist, I disappear into the act of making. I am not concerned with myself, but with line, form, movement, and the quiet intensity of creation. Each material carries its own soul, weight, memory, and history. Clay, wax, foam, textile—each responds differently and asks for a unique touch. I work with my hands, warming the wax until it becomes pliable, shaping it slowly and attentively. This act of making becomes a form of prayer, releasing me from the noise of daily life and opening a deeper creative reality.

During times of collective darkness, such as the pandemic, this process became a way of releasing suffering and learning to let go. Through creation, questions of compassion, forgiveness, and humanity came into sharp focus. Inspiration reveals itself in these moments of clarity and gratitude, when something essential becomes visible.

For me, art is a necessity—a way of giving form to what seeks to be seen. The Arcana were not created from a conventional idea of beauty, but from what emerged organically through my hands. They arise from an inner source and move outward, from interior to exterior. Bringing the essence of the cards into physical reality was a long, deeply spiritual journey—something that simply had to be done.