Tarot Readings for Artists
The Artist Portal:
The studio conversation you didn’t know you needed.
A tarot-based studio exchange that reveals the unconscious patterns shaping your work and helps you realign vision and process.
Do you ever find yourself having looping thoughts or fears, where you analyse, reflect, discuss, second-guess? You produce work, then wonder why certain patterns keep returning.
Like the famous duck–rabbit illusion, once we see one interpretation it can be difficult to see another.
The Artist Portal Reading helps reveal those hidden structures. Tarot cards activate thinking on a deep symbolic level, bypassing the purely rational mind. Because much of our behaviour is shaped by unconscious patterns, engaging this level of thought during a conversation can be incredibly powerful.
The cards often lead to moments of realisation very quickly. Connections emerge that may previously have gone unnoticed, and beliefs or fears that have been shaping your decisions become visible.
Often the issue isn’t ability.
It’s the invisible framework within which the work is being made.
Once these patterns are recognised, their hold begins to loosen. From there we turn to the most important part of the session: identifying what you need to do — and embody — in order to fully pursue the ideas and processes that genuinely excite you.
Sometimes the work will only change when the way you perceive it does.
Who This is For
This is for artists who:
• feel something in their work keeps repeating
• Feel their work is at a turning point but can’t yet see what the next step is
• sense a deeper paradigm shaping their decisions
• want to reconnect with the processes that genuinely excite them
This reading may not be for you if…
You are looking for rigid answers or complete conceptual control.
The process relies on symbolism, intuition and conversation.
The tarot cards used are pictorial decks that activate new perspectives. You will always be invited to interpret and take ownership of the meanings that emerge.
My role is to ask questions, reflect patterns, and hold a space where new insights can appear.
The Process
The Artist Portal Reading is a 90-minute online structured conversation.
The reading follows a method I developed through my own painting practice, combining structured reflection with symbolic tools to reveal the deeper paradigm shaping an artist’s work.
Before the session you submit five works and answer a short set of questions about them. These questions focus on what feels successful in the work, what excites you about the subject or idea, and what you enjoyed in the process of making it.
I then prepare the session by evaluating your work myself and also using Kim Krans’ Alchemy Deck, which helps identify symbolic processes and themes emerging from your responses.
During the reading we work through a sequence of tarot spreads together. The cards function as a visual and symbolic framework that allows patterns to organise themselves in real time. Connections often appear quickly — sometimes revealing aspects of the work you have sensed but not yet fully articulated.
The structure is rigorous, yet the experience is often surprising.
Once the underlying patterns become visible, the conversation naturally shifts towards how you want to work.
From there we turn to the practical question of how your processes can develop. We explore how the Japanese concept of Ikigai — often understood as the meeting point between what excites you, what you value, and what you choose to commit your energy to — can help align your vision, motivations, and working methods.
To give an example from my own practice: Ikigai is about reconnecting with flow by setting clear intentions for the process of making. I might decide that the aim of a painting is to embody movement and exuberance. Holding that intention allows me to stay with the work through the inevitable moments when everything starts to look like a mess.
Because the objective is clear, I can override the ego’s panic and remain committed to the experience of making. In doing so I surrender to a complex process — relinquishing control while committing to mastering something.
At that point the work often becomes larger than my initial intentions. Instead of trying to force the outcome, I’m participating in a process of creation that unfolds through the work itself. The result is far more dynamic than if I had tried to control everything from the beginning.
After the session you receive a recording of the conversation along with photographs of the spreads so you can revisit the insights that emerged.
Moving Forward With Your Work
The aim of the reading is not simply insight, but to identify new principles that support your authentic voice and help you take concrete steps towards new work and opportunities.
Once the shift happens, the question of duck or rabbit stops mattering — it’s time to get back in the studio and make the work.
About me
I’m a painter interested in perception and the way images can hold multiple realities at once.
I began studying painting at nineteen on a BA in Painting, but quickly became disillusioned with the theoretical frameworks surrounding it. That curiosity led me to study Cultural and Critical Theory, where I became interested in the role of the unconscious and how it shapes the way we think.
I later returned to painting and completed an MFA at Goldsmiths as a mature student. There, something important shifted in my practice: I began to connect the way I perceived the world with the materials and methods I was using in the studio. The work became far more interesting when perception, material and subject matter began to collide — when painting started to mirror the way I actually experience the world.
In the past few years my life and practice have moved through significant change, prompting me to re-examine many of the beliefs and assumptions that had shaped my work.
Rebuilding from that place became less about controlling outcomes and more about recognising the deeper patterns guiding perception, intuition and creative instinct. During this time I began working more deliberately with symbolic tools like tarot — not as prediction, but as a way of revealing the hidden structures that influence how we think, see and create.
The Artist Portal readings grew out of this curiosity about how perception shifts — and how those shifts can help artists reconnect with their own process of making
Testimonials
Being an admirer of Marijkes’ work, it was an honour to have a session with her. The reading, guided through a series of rigorous questions provided me with an in-depth look into my unconscious beliefs as an artist and their underlying history, as well as an exploration of current developments and practical strategies oriented towards the future. It was uncanny how accurate the reading was, how each question brought to the surface deep answers. In Marijke’s hands, this became a caring, nurturing and sensible exploration.
How to put into words something so mysterious - we carry within us multiple fragments of self-knowledge, yet this tarot, via a wise and attuned reading (delivered by an artist!), has the capacity to organise these fragments and make them visible as structures and diagrams. Each question emerged like a symbolic map, and because I have my notes, recording and photographs of the spreads, I will continue to feed from each of them.
I left the reading with a renewed sense of deep care and nurture towards my creative well. It was a meaningful, revelatory and very helpful experience.
Mónica.
If you sense there’s a deeper structure shaping your work but can’t quite see it yet, the reading is a way to bring it into view.
Prices
90-minute studio conversation
€60
Founding rate available until 31 March while the Artist Portal readings are first being introduced.
90-minute session · online · recording included
