What makes a self-portrait?
A self-portrait is an act of authorship. It raises a vital question: How does a person choose to appear in the world?
What is revealed? What is withheld? Through which images, symbols, objects, and stories does the self become willingly visible? How do we choose what to put on the page or the canvas? How do we decide which version of self is ready to come out and play? To be witnessed? To be held by the gaze of the other?
A self-portrait gives form to a life and traces the shifting relationship between an artist and their own experience, sometimes with uncanny realism, other times through fragments, dreams, distortions, doubles, or myth.
Master of self-portraits Frida Kahlo sitting with her work The Two Fridas (Las dos Fridas) 1939
Self-portraiture has always been bound to the brave act of choosing to be seen.
A self-portrait turns attention toward its maker, no matter how shadowy or transformed they may become. It is the artist who decides what enters the frame.
Astrologers have long understood the Sun as the luminary of visibility, the celestial body that brings things into appearance and gathers attention around a bright center. I think that self-portraiture works with that same kind of gesture, an artform that chooses what part of the self comes into view and what remains at its edges. Also, always considering that every act of illumination and every step into the light is also an invitation to relate to the shadow.
To decide to depict oneself is an act of assertion and courage:
I will be seen. I take up space. I decide how I appear. I will write myself into the story. I will play with all my symbols and fragments and make you look.
Leonor Fini, The Shepherdess of the Sphinxes,
1941
Leonora Carrington, Double Portrait, 1937–1940
Self-portraiture as a space of play, resistance, invention, and liberation
For centuries, women have appeared throughout Western art as muses, saints, victims, queens, goddesses, whores, allegories, companions, and anonymous bodies. Far fewer were granted the conditions to construct their own image (Many did it anyway!). I'm interested in self-portraiture as an act of claiming authorship and playing with the roles assigned to us. Across history, women, queer people, and many others pushed to the margins have repeatedly turned to self-imaging as a space of play, resistance, invention, and liberation. It is the power to define one's own image on one's own terms.
The queen of the photographic self-portrait Claude Cahun, Self Portrait as Elle in Barbe Bleu, 1929
Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait (as weight trainer), 1927.
Calling in the strange and creaturely selves
And what if what seeks to appear exceeds the limits of the face, the body, or even the material world?
What if, in the brave act of depicting the self, we open the door to other worlds? To multiplicity? To mystery?
How could we not?
Can a self-portrait be a horse? A sphinx? An ocean? A recurring dream? A witch's kitchen? A constellation of symbols?
This is where I propose that we open the door. With the help of Leonor Fini and Leonora Carrington.
Leonora Carrington, Self-Portrait 1937–1938
Leonor Fini, L'Ange d'anatomie, 1949
Leonor Fini, The End Of The World (Le Bout Du Monde) 1949
Leo Season 2026
This Leo season, just as Jupiter is starting its year-long journey through Leo and the lunar nodes shift onto the Leo–Aquarius axis, beginning a new cycle of eclipses, we'll explore the realm of self-portraiture as a symbolic practice of authorship and play. Guided by the work of Leonor Fini and Leonora Carrington, we'll move between art, autobiography, mythology, astrology, literature, and image-making, asking how artists compose a life and how those practices may be vital to us now.
What practices allow a self to emerge? And when the self emerges, what do we put a light on?
Leonor Fini (left) and Leonora Carrington (right) together in Paris
Two Artists & Two Symbolic Practices
Although both are often associated with Surrealism, each developed a symbolic language that far exceeded its boundaries. Friends in Paris, they shared an interest in mythology, esotericism, dreams, ritual, folklore, and metamorphosis. Both refused the role of muse and insisted on becoming the makers of their own creative worlds.
Their approaches, however, could not be more different.
Leonor Fini used her body again and again. Her self-portraits are populated by sphinxes, queens, priestesses, felines, masks, lovers, and doubles. She repeatedly stages herself in different guises, treating identity as theatrical, fluid, delightfully unstable and sensual. It is Leonor's gaze that meets ours from the center of the canvas.
Leonor Fini, Autoportrait au scorpion, 1939
Leonora Carrington, The Temptation of St. Anthony, 1945
Leonora Carrington has a different approach. She rarely painted herself so directly and never at the center. Instead, autobiography takes form across surrealist images of horses, alchemical vessels, folklore, animals, dreams, and impossible architectures. Rather than placing herself at the center of the image, she allows symbols to hold the weight of her experience. Leonora appears to us through them.
My proposal is that, taken together, they offer two distinct and important approaches to self-portraiture that I think can be quite inspiring for us today. One repeatedly returns to the figure and the other lets the self dissolve into an ecosystem of symbols. And between them, the possibilities of what a self-portrait could be, become far stranger and far more expansive and interesting.
Throughout the month, we'll borrow methods and approaches from both artists, hopefully to help us discover which symbolic practices feel most alive in our own work and lives.
I'm obsessed with the work of Leonor Fini and Leonora Carrington. They have changed the way I think about self-portraiture and autobiography. I'm fascinated by how they distribute the self across a symbolic world, allowing animals and other creaturely presences to accompany and sometimes carry the story. Their work reminds me that a life can become visible in many ways, including mysterious and oneiric ones. Perhaps one of their great lessons is to recognize the images and symbols that have been traveling with us all along.
Leonor Fini, Self-portrait as cat
Logistics and Calendar
Over Four Weeks- 3 live gatherings at 12pm EST/6pm Paris time
Opening Studio-22 July: Leo Season invitations, Leonor Fini, symbolic self-portraiture, and gathering the materials of a personal mythology.
Between Sessions: Creative prompts, reading, image gathering, observation, and making.
Second Studio-5 August: Leonora Carrington, mythic imagination, autobiography, and the symbolic self.
Eclipse Week12 August - No live session. Instead, space to make, to wander, to rest and to allow the work to surprise you. Who knows what kind of aperture an eclipse might open?
Final Studio-19 August: Presentations, witnessing, reflection, and collective conversation.
Who Might Enjoy This Studio?
This studio is especially for artists, writers, astrologers, mystics, readers, photographers, designers, performers, educators, curious souls, and anyone interested in exploring creative practice through an experimental lens, using symbolism, mythology, and image-making.
You do not need to know how to make art.
You do not need to identify as an artist or even a creative.
There is no required experience of any kind (art, astrology etc.)
You only need curiosity and a willingness to experiment.
Open to all genders and experiences.
Leonor Fini (1951)
Kati Horna's Portrait of Leonora Carrington in her studio, 1956 / Leonora Carrington, Woman with Fox, 2010
This Studio Is Not for You If...
...you're looking for step-by-step painting instruction or technical art training.
...you're hoping for quick creative hacks, productivity tips, or a formula for becoming "more creative." (though this may just end up happening anyway!)
...you're looking for definitive interpretations of astrology or art.
...you want a traditional art history lecture or a conventional astrology course.
Studio Solar is built around experimentation. We'll look closely, follow symbols, gather images, make things, and share unfinished work. The goal is never mastery or perfection but to cultivate a richer creative practice and a deeper relationship with your own symbolic language. Also to grow intimacy with the incredible work of Leonor Fini and Leonora Carrington as well as with the invitations of Leo for the rest of 2026.
I would love to see you inside. Please reach out with any questions. You can sign up here:
Practical Information
Three live online studio sessions
Dates
22 July · 5 August · 19 August
You'll receive
Three live studio gatherings with carefully crafted visuals and slides
A beautifully curated visual reader
Creative prompts between sessions
Recordings if you're unable to attend live
A small, participatory group
Space to present and discuss your work
A close encounter with the work, lives, and symbolic worlds of Leonor Fini and Leonora Carrington
Investment
€95 Regular price
€85 Early Bird (until July 6th)
€75 Paid Substack subscribers & Chthonic AF alumni
LEONORA CARRINGTON. Semaine. 1956
LEONOR FINI, Sphinx Ariane, 1973
