Su Veya Süt

If you hold a glass of milk up to a strong light, you can replicate the hazy warmth of a sunset. Science says a sunset is just a result of light refracted through atmospheric haze at the horizon. But we know that refraction is entirely magical too. Our physical and metaphysical realities not only coexist, but also interact. Observation affects the observed. This work was created in a meditative flow, painting side-by-side with a dear Turkish companion for hours, giving form to haze. Su veya süt—water or milk. The black-light rendering, hidden in daylight, appears entirely watery, the dangerous shimmer of a blue-ringed octopus. In the light of day, the milky wash brings to mind smoke and synapses, acid rain and factories, and a climate-change sunset.

About Margaret Schneider

I’m a third-generation artist, writer, and musician, reclaiming my maternal Russian-Ukrainian heritage, reconnecting with ancestral traditions, and making reparations for ancestral harms. My spiritual and artistic practices are intuitive, including practice of divination via everyday omens, tarot, stichomancy, scrying, and dream states.
And no, like many, I can't easily separate out my Ukrainian and Russian ancestry. The nations' shared Slavic pagan roots run deep, as does the shared pain of this war. As a descendant of Jews from Odessa who escaped pogroms a century ago, I of course side with the oppressed in Ukraine and elsewhere. The grandparents I never knew were deeply anti-war—they deliberately left Judaism and helped found an ethical society. They believed what connects us as people is far more important than what divides us. I believe that too, and I feel connected to them in that belief.

To Learn More

More of my photography, artwork, and divination can be seen on my Instagram account at https://www.instagram.com/scaredcicada/