The soul retrieval: artistic depictions of lost selves

Soul retrieval is a phrase used in contemporary spirituality for recovering the parts of a person that grief, fear, estrangement or trauma has hidden. In Imelda Almqvist’s artistic depictions of lost selves, recovery becomes a visual passage through caves, forests, thresholds and star fields, where fragmentation is recognised and wholeness is imagined.

Her shamanic paintings draw on mythology, sacred traditions, Dreamtime imagery, mathematics, language and the landscapes of the inner world. These sources meet without becoming a fixed visual formula: an archetype, geometric structure or symbolic colour can shift according to the emotional truth of each canvas.

For Australian viewers, the paintings open a conversation between private experience and a shared visual language. Melbourne’s laneway studio culture, Sydney’s commercial gallery scene and the alternative creative networks of Byron Bay offer familiar settings for encountering work that resists a purely decorative reading.

Loss, fragmentation and return

The themed collections at Imelda Almqvist Art present the return of the hidden self through figures, animals, vegetation and charged spaces. Available paintings are displayed with pricing, allowing viewers to move from contemplation to a practical decision without losing sight of the image’s inner narrative.

A face half-emerging from paint may signify a memory waiting to be acknowledged. Elsewhere, a distant figure, animal companion or shaft of light suggests that recovery depends upon crossing an unfamiliar internal terrain. The lost self is presented as something alive, hidden and capable of finding its way home.

Myth as a map for recovery

Her exploration of the labyrinth in paint gives the journey a clear structure: wandering, looping, confronting obstacles and recognising the possibility of return. The labyrinth is not simply a maze but an inner passage, painted as a place where direction can change and insight arrives through movement.

Myth works similarly. A descent, guardian, flight or homecoming can stand for transformation without prescribing one universal interpretation. Sacred stories provide emotional coordinates for experiences that are often difficult to put into words, allowing symbols such as the shadow, the cave and the threshold to carry personal meaning.

Colour, geometry and the unseen

Some works build their symbolism through colour, with deep reds, ochres, blues and greens suggesting heat, earth, water and the space between states. Other paintings rely on mathematical ratios, repeated forms and intersecting lines. These structures lend order to volatile subject matter, creating a sense that the unseen world can be approached through attention and proportion.

The poems accompanying the collection extend that visual vocabulary into language. Read beside a painting, a poem may clarify its atmosphere or open another route into its mystery. Testimonials add another human dimension, showing how viewers recognise their own stories of separation, resilience and reconnection in the figures and landscapes.

Reading the imagery in Australia

Melbourne’s studio trails and Sydney’s commercial galleries provide different ways of meeting these works, while Byron Bay and the Blue Mountains carry their own associations with alternative practice, retreat and spiritual landscape. The paintings do not depict these locations literally; they instead enter the emotional geography familiar to many Australian viewers.

Australian conversational directness often suits these images well. A painting might be called “a beauty”, while an early look is “worth a squiz”. The market similarly combines online sales, direct commissions and private agreements. Buyers should check whether GST, international freight, insurance and framing are included before completing a purchase.

For those interested in the meeting of visual art, sound and movement, the Noise Border Ensemble provides a complementary cultural reference. Australian festival audiences already know how physical spaces, performance and visual imagery can combine into a single immersive encounter.

From viewing to sacred art practice

Imelda’s training offers introductory two-day courses and longer professional programmes in London and Pennsylvania. The two-day courses provide a concentrated starting point, while the extended programmes suit artists and practitioners seeking deeper study, sustained critique and a clearer approach to sacred image-making.

Travelling from Australia to London or Pennsylvania adds airfare, accommodation and time-zone adjustments to the learning journey. Visitors may combine a course with cultural exploration, while anyone commissioning artwork should clarify the brief, revisions, presentation and insured shipping before committing.