Sacred Mothers on Canvas: Isis, Mary and Pachamama in Paint

For as long as humans have lifted a brush, mothers have surfaced in sacred art. The maternal archetype keeps returning, whether painted on temple walls in Thebes, glowing behind altar candles in a Melbourne chapel, or sketched on paper after a vision in the Blue Mountains. The figures change names and costumes, yet their gravity stays the same.

Imelda Almqvist paints from this same well. Her work gathers goddesses from cultures that rarely share a frame, asking what emerges when Isis, Mary, and Pachamama stand together on a single canvas. The paintings are not illustrations of myth so much as conversations with living presences, filtered through a London-based studio that draws on shamanic practice, mathematics, and language.

Each of the three mothers carries a distinct cultural footprint. Isis arrives from the Nile, draped in magic and the grief of a lost husband. Mary steps from two thousand years of Christian devotion, mother of a teacher who turned the world sideways. Pachamama rises from the Andes, the warm pulse of soil after rain. Their differences are real, but their shared function as a source of nurture and protection makes them natural companions in a single body of work.

For Australian viewers especially, earth-mother imagery carries an extra charge. The Aboriginal understanding of Country, where land itself is a sentient mother, sits close to the wisdom that Pachamama keeps. Galleries in Chippendale and Fitzroy often program exhibitions that thread Indigenous and cross-cultural ideas together, and the appetite for work that honours multiple sacred traditions is growing across Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth.

Isis and the magic of the throne

Isis has been painted for millennia, from faience amulets to Romantic oils. She holds the hieroglyph of the throne, which is also her name, and her magic is the kind that reassembles what has been broken. In Imelda's Isis pieces, the goddess often appears crowned, wings half-spread, holding the tools of healing and remembrance.

The painting process here borrows from ceremonial practice. The studio becomes a working space where myth is invoked rather than depicted, and fragments of ancient myth travel through the brush. Gold leaf and deep ultramarine tend to dominate, evoking the night sky Isis was said to have made with her own feathers.

Mary as earth and star

Mary is the most familiar maternal figure in Western art, yet her shamanic dimensions are often overlooked. Imelda reads her as a threshold being, a woman who gave birth to a consciousness that could not be contained by any one religion. The Mary paintings in the collection lean toward deep crimson and bone white, with spirals that echo both Celtic carving and outback ochre.

This is also the Mary who walks beside Mary Magdalene in the Gnostic gospels, a healer in her own right. The approach borrows from the whole-field sensibility championed by gestalt art projects, where pattern and presence matter more than isolated detail. For an Australian audience that has grown up with strong Catholic and Anglican communities from Fremantle to Parramatta, that groundedness lands with a particular weight.

Pachamama and the Andean pulse

Pachamama is rarely given wall space in mainstream Western galleries, which is part of what makes her presence in this collection meaningful. She is the Andean earth, the giver of maize and potatoes, the one who shakes cities with her breathing. Imelda paints her in warm umbers, with curves that mirror the contours of mountains rather than the geometry of cathedrals.

The Pachamama canvases often arrive after a period of fasting and quiet, when the studio is cold and the light over Hampstead Heath is low. The influence of the role of the artist as a modern shaman is felt strongly here, since the work is less about skill and more about willingness to listen.

Three mothers side by side

Aspect	Isis	Mary	Pachamama
Origin	Ancient Egypt, Nile delta	Levant, early first millennium	Andes, pre-Columbian South America
Core symbol	Throne hieroglyph, wings, ankh	Veil, spiral, star, heart	Mountain curve, seed, serpent
Domain	Magic, healing, the afterlife	Compassion, intercession, threshold	Soil, harvest, seismic force
Sacred element	Nile water and starlight	Bread, milk, candle flame	Rain, root, fertile ground
Artistic approach in this collection	Gold leaf, temple geometry	Layered oils, devotional layering	Earth pigments, organic line

The table does not flatten the three. It is a way of seeing how each goddess keeps a different door open, and how the paintings honour those doors rather than forcing them to match.

Listening to Country

Aboriginal Australians have always understood that land is a mother. Songlines criss-cross the continent like veins, and stories of the Sky Mother and the Earth Mother predate any other tradition in the territory. Imelda's cross-cultural work sits close to this sensibility, even though it draws on European and South American sources.

The resonance is felt in places like Byron Bay and the Adelaide Hills, where artists and healers gather to talk about the land. Reading the dreamtime and aboriginal art influences deepens the conversation, since it shows how the Dreamtime continues to shape contemporary practice. No worries, the work is not about borrowing. Fair dinkum respect is the starting point for any cross-cultural painting.

When the paintings arrive

A finished canvas does not feel manufactured. It feels arrived. Imelda often describes the moment when the image takes over, and the brush is simply keeping up. Sigil-like elements sometimes surface in the background layers, personal symbols that anchor the work. This connects to the art of the sigil creating personal symbols, a practice that gives the paintings a hidden grammar.

If these three mothers speak to you, the paintings are available to view in London and to ship anywhere, including across the Tasman and throughout the Asia-Pacific. Sacred art training is offered through introductory two-day courses and longer professional programmes, with current dates and venues listed in the main menu. Step into the gallery, take your time, and let the canvases do the talking.