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Szeptucha (The Whisperer) – Mixed Media Photography on Wood

Szeptucha (The Whisperer) by Robin Rivers is an original piece of mixed media photography on wood from the Retrieval series. I created this piece using my own photography shot in Northeastern France and creative commons zero archival images from Muzeum Narodove W Krakowie and The Met Open Archives. Each element is hand cut and laid using analog collage techniques. Other elements include acrylic paint and medium. 

Inquire about this piece HERE.

How I source and care for historical materials → Sources

Description

The Original

Szeptucha (The Whisperer) by Robin Rivers is an original piece of mixed media photography on wood from the Retrieval series. I created this piece using my own photography shot in Northeastern France and creative commons zero archival images from Muzeum Narodove W Krakowie and The Met Open Archives. Each element is hand cut and laid using analog collage techniques. Other elements include acrylic paint and medium. 

The piece measures 23×36″ (w/h) and is mounted on wood. Shipping will be calculated based on location.  Please note that colours and contrast vary between different monitors.  The colours may not match your monitor’s display exactly. Additionally, copyright of my artwork does not transfer with purchase.

The Inspiration for Szeptucha (The Whisperer) by Robin Rivers

Through the Retrieval series, I work against the inherited iconography of medieval stained glass, recovering the feminine presence it was built to suppress. Each piece layers my own photography — shot across locations in France — with archival materials, returning the stained glass form to what it was shaped to obscure: women not as symbol or margin, but as origin. These are not reconstructions of a lost past. They are retrievals — what cultural memory would hold if it had never been severed from its source.
 
In Szeptucha, I reconstructed the Arthurian myth of Isolde reimagined as a window into her true power as a healer. In the most familiar version,  Isolde and Tristan’s love story overshadows her profound healing abilities. This includes healing Tristan’s dragon wound. Tristan, of course, dies and Isolde follows in sacrifice. This piece lives in that tension between woman lost from heartbreak and a healer who gives her life in the attempt to save Tristan’s. 
 
Here, she is the whisperer: the powerful herbalist and conjurer of Polish folk tradition who speaks healing into existence. I titled the work Szeptucha — the Polish word this type of folk healer — as a nod to the Teutonic legends of Poland and my own cultural roots. The imagery begins with the two lunula – half moon symbols of protection in old Slavic traditions. I used the image of a medieval stirrup with its odd-shaped, hand-hewn metal. The shields are all medieval, with two of Polish origin. I used them as the mark of a different kind of warrior that guides us all through health, sickness, even death. I created the body from a Polish war cloak and spent an inordinate amount of time in the archives, trying ideas out, before I settled on the hair from a woven adornment with which Polish warriors embellished their horses. The rose hip photos are a nod to the herbalist tradition.
 

Sources

  • Original photography from Robin Rivers shot in December 2024 near Orquevaux, France.
  • Muzeum Narodove W Krakowie Open Archives: Kałkan w tradycji wiązany ze Stefanem Czarnieckim (Kalkan Shield) | ; Link to image
  • Muzeum Narodove W Krakowie Open Archives: Bunchuk – horse harness decoration; Link to image
  • Muzeum Narodove W Krakowie Open Archives: One of a pair of stirrups; Link to image
  • Muzeum Narodove W Krakowie Open Archives: Bourkha owned by Stefan Czarniecki; Link to image
  • The Met Open Archives: Shield, 1500s; Link to Image
  • The Met Open Archives: Italian shield, 1600  Link to image
  • Artist materials:
    • Acrylic paint,  acrylic matte medium, fine line pen

The Artist

Robin Rivers is an artist, photographer, and writer who creates from conversations with ancient ponds and old trees, spirits of place and old ones whose lost stories want to be told. As a mixed-media artist, Rivers works with original photography, museum archives, and storytelling to give form to the old ones who speak to her through dreams, deep listening, and walking the land in ancient places. Her practice weaves together mystical guidance and archival research, creating magical pieces that restore powerful lost connections and stories rising up once again. Robin creates all pieces at Studio Albertine in Vancouver, Canada—on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples. This includes the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Before you go, check out more of my work HERE.

Finally, be sure to follow me on SUBSTACK

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