Romeria: Visions from a World Still Forming

This post isn’t an argument, a statement, or a position to defend. It’s simply a moment in the ongoing life of Romeria — a place, a mood, a red world that continues to reveal itself through image.

What you’re looking at here is not a finished idea. It’s closer to a glimpse.

I’ve always worked visually first. Paintings, drawings, textures, marks — that’s where meaning appears for me. Words usually arrive afterwards, quietly, just to sit alongside the image rather than explain it away. This post follows that same instinct. Think of it less as an essay and more as a gallery note left on the wall.

The Image

The figure stands in red — surrounded by heat, motion, and glow. The scratchy digital texture matters as much as the subject itself. I like images that feel handled, worked, slightly rough, as if they’ve been pulled out of something molten rather than designed.

There are elements here that might raise eyebrows if over-analysed: the light rising through the body, the glowing drop, the strange connections between above and below. But when I look at it, none of that feels shocking or out of place. It feels natural. Almost innocent.

Sometimes the most honest response to an image is simply: why not?

That question isn’t careless — it’s freeing. It allows symbolism to exist without being tidied up. Light doesn’t need permission to rise. Blood doesn’t need to explain itself. Beauty doesn’t need to behave.

How It Arrived

This image came into being through a conversation — between my own visual instincts and an AI image model guided by prompts shaped from my existing aesthetic. I don’t experience this as pressing a button and receiving art. It feels more like steering fog.

I recognise when something belongs to me. That recognition is the work.

The AI doesn’t decide what matters. It offers possibilities. I choose what stays. The process feels intuitive, playful, sometimes surprising. It’s fast, but not careless. The speed simply removes the long gap between imagining and seeing.

What I enjoy most is that small sense of discovery — when an image arrives that feels familiar, as if it was already waiting somewhere.

From Black to Red

Looking at Romeria now, I can see a shift happening.

Earlier work felt darker, heavier — closer to nigredo, the blackening stage of alchemy, where things break down, dissolve, and confront shadow. Romeria still carries depth and danger, but it has moved into something warmer, more alive. The reds, the heat, the glow — this feels like a transition into the red stage, where energy returns and form begins to reassert itself.

Not as purity. Not as perfection.

But as life.

This artwork forms part of a developing visual series created for a book set within the world of Romeria. The images draw on ancient, ritualistic, and mythic influences, favouring atmosphere over clarity and instinct over instruction.

Rather than illustrating a fixed story, each image acts as a glimpse — a moment where something older and less articulate briefly becomes visible.

As a male artist, I’ve found something deeply freeing in exploring a female presence at the heart of this world. This image connects to the anima — not as an idea, but as a felt force — the shadowed, luminous inner counterpart that carries intuition, power, and transformation.

The figure embodies a feminine strength that is neither softened nor aggressive. She holds light within darkness, revealing beauty in chaos rather than resisting it. In creating her, the work becomes both outward myth and inward dialogue — a way of engaging with the shadow anima through image, ritual, and imagination.