Inner voice - Christine Wiersema

Major Arcana and archetype

The Tarot originated in Europe as a set of illustrated playing cards and, over time, evolved into a symbolic system. At its core are the twenty two Major Arcana, a numbered sequence of archetypal figures, each carrying its own name and visual vocabulary. Read as a progression, the Major Arcana has often been understood as a condensed map of human experience, including thresholds, choices, loss, insight, and transformation.

In Inner Voice, Christine approaches these figures as archetypes rather than characters. An archetype can be understood as a universal pattern, an image or motif that recurs across cultures and eras, and is recognised intuitively even when encountered for the first time. The language of the Tarot is built from such recurring symbols, including signs, gestures, attributes, and elemental forms that speak beyond a single tradition. For this reason, the Major Arcana has been interpreted through many frameworks, from religious iconography to astrology and alchemical thought.

Christine’s project does not aim to explain Tarot or instruct its use. Instead, it
translates an existing symbolic sequence into sculptural presence, inviting
viewers to encounter the figures physically, and to recognise what resonates.

My path to Inner Voice

Inner Voice is the convergence of a lifetime, personal history, spiritual inquiry, and a devotion to making. What began as an inner language of symbols, numbers, and archetypes gradually insisted on taking physical form.

The question I am often asked is when my interest in tarot began, and why I felt compelled to create these sculptures. It is a question that requires time and reflection, because there is no single moment in which something begins or ends. There was no lightning strike, no clear instruction. The process unfolded gradually, from within.

From an early age, I was drawn to mystery. As a curious child, I was fascinated by questions of origin and meaning: death, astrology, ancient civilizations, religious rituals, initiation, the pyramids, reincarnation.

I was interested in history and personal stories, especially those marked by emotional depth and lived experience. I was always asking myself why things existed as they did.

Creativity was not optional, but essential.

I once encountered astrology through a reading that, at the time, I could not fully recognize as my own. Many years later, rereading this chart, I was struck by its accuracy. It described a life shaped by tension in youth, delayed unfolding, challenges with language, and a deep need for self-expression through art. Creativity was not optional, but essential.

For many years, I worked in psychiatry, within a mental health hospital. Over time, however, I began to feel an increasing pull toward drawing and visual expression, which eventually led me to train as an art teacher. Around the same period, I moved from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, got married, and became a mother of two children.

Tarot entered my life later, when I was invited to take a tarot course. Although I had never worked with tarot before, the moment I held the cards in my hands, something familiar returned. The images, symbols, colors, and figures spoke directly to my intuition. It felt like coming home to a world of art, philosophy, and inner knowing. Like pieces of a puzzle coming together, my experiences in psychiatry, my artistic practice, and my intuitive.

Tarot revealed itself to me not as prediction, but as a mirror: a house filled with reflections, where each card represents a phase of inner transformation.

I later undertook formal studies in tarot and related esoteric disciplines, allowing this intuitive recognition to deepen into lived knowledge. Tarot revealed itself to me not as prediction, but as a mirror: a house filled with reflections, where each card represents a phase of inner transformation. It became a language through which personal growth, shadow, and consciousness could be seen and felt.

According to astrology, my north node lies in the ninth house, a position associated with the urge to bring one’s spiritual vision into the world. I experience this not as theory, but as a deep inner knowing. It feels less like a choice and more like a recognition of what needs to be done: to give form to a life philosophy and to carry questions of meaning outward through creation.

The Major Arcana revealed itself through a profound spiritual experience. Light appeared unexpectedly from above, illuminating two elongated sculptures standing in shadow in my home. In that moment, an inner knowing arose: the Major Arcana asked to be brought into form. Their narrow, vertical presence revealed itself as the physical language through which these archetypes wished to exist.

In that moment, an inner knowing arose: the Major Arcana asked to be brought into form.

From that moment on, the Arcana began to seek embodiment. The impulse did not come from planning or intention, but from receptivity. The Major Arcana asked to be made visible.

The Major Arcana translates this inner world into physical form. The sculptures are long and vertical, shaped by archetype, number, element, and symbol. They are not illustrations of cards, but presences. Each figure carries an inner truth that does not ask to be explained, only encountered.

Creating these works required surrender. I did not work from concept, but from listening. Often my hands knew before my mind. Attempts to change a face or alter an expression were resisted by the material itself. My rational mind wanted change, yet my hands refused. The work does not come from will, but from listening.

It took many years of sustained work before the Arcana could be realized, each figure requiring time, solitude, and full dedication. Much of this work unfolded in isolation. As an artist, I disappear into the act of making. I am not concerned with myself, but with line, form, movement, and the quiet intensity of creation.

Each material carries its own soul, its own weight, memory, and history. Clay, wax, foam, textile: each responds differently and asks for a different kind of touch. I work with my hands, warming the wax until it becomes pliable, shaping it slowly and attentively. The act of making becomes a form of prayer. It releases me from the noise of daily life and opens a deeper creative reality.

During times of collective darkness, such as the Covid-19 period, this process became a way of releasing suffering and illusion, and of learning to let go. Through creation, questions of compassion, forgiveness, and humanity came into focus. Inspiration reveals itself in moments of clarity and gratitude, when something essential becomes visible.

The Arcana are not created from an idea of beauty, but from what emerges through my hands.

For me, art is a necessity, a way of giving form to what seeks to be seen. The Arcana are not created from an idea of beauty, but from what emerges through my hands. They arise from an inner source and move outward, from interior to exterior.

Bringing the ideas emerging from the cards into reality and into living form was a long and deeply spiritual process, something that simply had to be done.

Selected Work

A glimpse into the Major Arcana in bronze, selected from the Inner Voice cycle. Photographs of completed works will be expanded as the cycle progresses.

IIII. The Emperor

Bronze, life-size

Detail

Front view

Pendent detail

The King

Close-up shoulder

Process

Foundry

The King

Close-up shoulder

Artist's Voice

Christine speaks about the cycle—its origin, its symbols, and what it means to stand before these figures. Short reflections accompany selected works, offering an entry point without closing interpretation.

Becoming

From first gesture to final patina, the cycle emerged through repetition, doubt, and devotion. The foundry becomes a second studio—where bronze records every decision, every touch, every silence.

Realised over five years, Inner Voice demanded a sustained, solitary focus—modelling, revising, casting, and refining until each figure carried the necessary clarity. The works move through clay and wax into bronze, where surface becomes language: texture, weight, and light.

As a teenager, Christine left home at a young age and moved to Amsterdam. There, she encountered a painter who introduced her to the world of visual art. She began taking painting classes and soon discovered that her strength lay in the combination of color and atmosphere. Her early work developed into a romantic realist style, and she exhibited in several galleries. Over time, her focus shifted toward the human figure, although her true attraction always lay in creating mysterious and atmospheric spaces on canvas.

While continuing her artistic development, Christine worked for many years in psychiatric care. She trained as a psychiatric nurse and sociotherapist, a professional path that profoundly shaped her understanding of the human psyche. Through therapy, self-reflection, and close work with vulnerable individuals, she learned to see beyond behavior and to recognize fear, trauma, longing, and the shadow aspects of the self. These insights became inseparable from her artistic practice.

A transformative phase began when she enrolled in a formal education to become a drawing teacher. This step opened an entirely new world and felt like a long awaited homecoming. Surrounded by easels, large sheets of paper, charcoal, and erasers, she awaited the arrival of the nude model. It was as if she could breathe again, her thoughts focused and her hands ready to create. From learning perspective and applied design to making her first bronze sculpture, a small figure with a pregnant belly, she experienced a deep sense of happiness, pride, and belonging.

During this period, Christine continued painting, occasionally selling her work, and followed a course in advanced color theory. She then discovered tarot and undertook a course to deepen her understanding of color theory, exploring the subtle connections between color, numbers, astrology, planets, and symbols. She had never seen tarot cards before, yet they immediately resonated with her intuitive way of thinking. Throughout her life, Christine had been drawn to esoteric and symbolic systems, and her encounter with tarot marked a significant convergence of these interests, becoming a lasting influence on her artistic and inner development.

Within a year of study, she began to truly absorb the tarot. Her background in psychiatric care, combined with her intuition, allowed her to approach tarot as a symbolic language that makes the invisible visible—philosophical and psychological imagery offering insight into emotions, inner processes, and lived experience.

Christine later met her husband, moved from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, married, and became a mother of two children. Around this time, her artistic path gradually led her from painting to sculpture after attending a sculpting class. She continued taking classes and sculpting for over twenty-five years in bronze, developing portraits, figures, and small angel sculptures.

Creating with her hands, emptying her thoughts, and keeping her eyes focused on planes, lines, structure, and the overall composition while working with clay or wax was deeply fascinating. It was challenging, demanded concentration, and carried a sense of hope. Her happiness lay in the discovery that she knew how to create. It felt as though an artistic door had been opened. She had never imagined that she could sculpt a portrait of a child or a dancing figure. Through sustained practice and creation, this eventually led to her first solo exhibition at home.

She stopped painting with oil and divided her time between her family and the creation of small angel sculptures. Yet even while sculpting, Christine missed the interaction present in her earlier work: the analyzing, integrating, and mental engagement of creative thought. She felt a longing to go deeper.

This longing led her to a new and extensive tarot education in Nijmegen. Over the course of three years, she studied tarot, astrology, esoteric numerology, and Kabbalah as part of a professional training program to become a certified tarot practitioner. Christine worked professionally with tarot for many years, teaching and guiding others through inner processes. She approached tarot not as fortune-telling, but as a tool for insight, reflection, and transformation. This period played a key role in the development of her voice and her understanding of the shadow within each person as an essential part of creative identity.

A new phase began when Christine moved with her family to France, where they renovated a château in the south of the country. There, she continued sculpting, began teaching sculpture, organized exhibitions, and opened a gallery at home. Her sculptures were exhibited nationally and internationally and entered private collections in Switzerland and more than a dozen other countries.

After fourteen years, she divorced and relocated to Bordeaux, where she established her own studio and continued her sculptural practice. This was not an easy period, but one that led her back to independence, focus, and artistic clarity. Pain, she believes, is raw material for both self-knowledge and art. From darkness, something meaningful can emerge.

After a profound spiritual experience, her work entered a new phase. This marked the emergence of The Major Arcana: a sculptural interpretation in bronze of the twenty-two Major Arcana tarot archetypes. Christine creates these figures from a deeply spiritual necessity. Each sculpture embodies an archetypal stage of human consciousness—transformation, shadow, rebirth, power, vulnerability, and becoming. They are not illustrations, but manifestations: symbolic presences that invite contemplation and inner dialogue.