Crossing the Threshold: Art, Magic & the New Moon in Gemini

Witch in a Wheelchair - Monthly Musings from Ange’s Studio

✴︎ Cuppa & Catch Up ✴︎

Greetings Creative Alchemist,

Welcome to the very first edition of Monthly Musings from Ange’s Studio! This new journal-style format will land with each new moon, weaving together studio updates, witchy wisdom, seasonal shifts, creative reflections, and artist inspiration, all brewed up with a little magic and a lot of heart.

After months of planning, the gallery doors are officially open for the Creativa Exhibition by Collective 24, "an eclectic group of emerging artists here in Melbourne/Naarm! Opening Night is Friday, May 30 and I’d love to see you there. I’m beyond excited to share that alongside my newest work, The Crow Cycle has taken flight once again and landed at Kindred Cameras, Docklands, for the exhibition. The crows will be watching from the walls, and this time they’ve brought friends. Limited edition crow-themed journals and postcards will be available at the gallery, along with creations from other artists in the show. (You can also find my crow-themed creations online via my Redbubble shop.)

Keep your eyes on my socials in the lead-up to the event, we’ll be sharing sneak peeks, behind-the-scenes moments, and maybe a crow or two.

In other news… I’m moving! Over the next few weeks, I’ll be packing up both home and studio to settle into my new forever home, a beautiful brand-new wheelchair accessible apartment that I can’t wait to make my own. There’ll be boxes, chaos, and copious amounts of tea, but I’m so looking forward to sharing more as things unfold.

With the studio in flux, I’ve embraced a slower rhythm and turned my creative focus inward. This winter, I’m stepping into a long form writing project, something I’ve been dreaming of for a while. It’s a way to keep the creative fire burning while my art supplies are packed away, and it’s also a gentle offering to my body, which is calling for rest.

I’ll be diving deeper into this new seasonal writing practice, what it means, why now, and how it’s all unfolding, in this month’s Art Witch Musings. So, grab a warm cuppa and keep reading...

Creativa by Collective 24 exhibition flyer

✴︎ Cycles of Craft — Seasonal & Celestial Shifts in the Studio ✴︎

As we settle into the last weeks of autumn and tiptoe toward the winter solstice, the energies around us shift dramatically. What was outward now draws inward. And the skies above? They’ve got plenty to say about our creative rhythms, emotional landscapes, and inner growth this month.

Gemini Twins

♊ Gemini Season (from May 21)

The Sun breezed into Gemini, and were invited to lighten things up, get curious, and explore new ideas. This season encourages us to ask questions, write, speak, and connect in unexpected ways. It’s a great time to journal, brainstorm, or dive into something new and mentally stimulating, perfect energy for the start of a fresh creative chapter.

🌑 New Moon in Gemini – Tuesday, May 27 at 1:05pm AEST

This is your cosmic permission slip to reset your mindset. A great time to set intentions around learning, sharing your truth, or trying out a new practice (like a different medium or creative tool). Gemini New Moons favour flexible thinking and starting things that involve writing, teaching, or speaking your truth.

♃ Jupiter in Cancer – from June 9 to June 30

Jupiter, the planet of growth and abundance, moves into the deeply emotional sign of Cancer. This transit draws us back to our roots, our families, our ancestry, and our need for safety and belonging. It’s also a powerful time for inner expansion through care, tradition, and gut wisdom. You might feel called to rework your physical space (hello, nesting vibes) or tap into the stories held in your lineage.

🌕 Full Moon in Sagittarius – Wednesday, June 11 at 5:43pm AEST

This full moon brings a burst of fire into the cooler days. Sagittarius energy asks: What do you believe in? Where are you being called to stretch beyond your current limits? This is a beautiful lunation for releasing old dogmas or fears around following your own path. Rituals around fire, freedom, or setting bold intentions are well supported.

❄️ Winter Solstice – Saturday, June 21 at 12:41pm AEST

The turning of the Wheel. The longest night. The sacred pause. Solstice invites us into a moment of stillness and deep inner knowing. This is a time to honour what you’ve let go of and gently begin to dream the next cycle into being. Consider lighting a candle, writing a list of things you’re grateful for, or simply resting. You’ve earned it.

✨ Deep dives into these themes will be shared over at Ange’s Studio on Facebook, so keep an eye out there if you’d like to go further into the energies of each event.

🌌 And don’t forget, there’ll be a Special Edition Post for the Winter Solstice with reflective rituals, journaling prompts, and seasonal musings.

✴︎  Gemini Season Art Journal Prompt ✴︎

An Art Witch’s desk with a journal and art supplies

✨ “How can I embrace curiosity and duality in my creative practice this month? What stories am I ready to tell, and which voices within me need to be heard?”

Use this prompt to explore contrasts, conversation, and playful experimentation in your art. Try layering text, symbols, or fragments of writing to capture Gemini’s lively, restless energy. Let your pages become a dialogue between your many creative selves.

✴︎ Art Witch Musings – Embracing the in-between ✴︎

An Art Witch’s desk with Grimoire and laptop

Chapter One: The Threshold is the Work

As the nights draw longer and the wind hums her secrets through the trees, I find myself slipping gently into the space between. The season invites stillness, reflection, and retreat, so I’m heeding her call. This winter, my studio will be a cauldron of words, warmed by endless cups of tea, witchy tunes on repeat, and bowls of soup stirred with intention. The paintbrushes are resting. The clay sleeps. But something deeper is waking in the pages.

This new section of my Journal, Art Witch Musings, will be home to a different kind of creative work, a long form unfolding. Think of it as the beginning of a book that hasn’t yet decided what shape it wants to take. A zine? A grimoire? A manifesto? All I know is that the first sentence has arrived, and I’m following her down into the dark.

This chapter marks the beginning of a larger body of work that will evolve slowly over the next few moon cycles. It’s part essay, part invocation, part love letter to the liminal. A deeper dive into who I am as an artist and a witch, beyond the social media snippets, beyond the finished artwork.

Because the truth is, what you see, the art, is only the echo. The real work begins in the unseen places. The threshold. The fog. The marrow. Art witchery, for me, isn’t just about aesthetic or vibe. It’s not all herbs and candles (though there are plenty of both). It’s a way of being. A way of listening. A sacred creative practice that weaves together magic, feminism, disability, intuition, spirituality, and the radical act of slowing down.

I work in the liminal spaces that are neither here nor there, moments between moments. This is where my best work brews. As someone living with disability, I already inhabit a different kind of rhythm. Time bends. Energy moves like a tide. My creative process is never linear. It spirals. It rests. It returns.

To live and create in this way is both political and spiritual. It’s a reclaiming of body and voice. A refusal to conform to capitalist productivity or ableist ideals of what a “working artist” should look like. It’s also deeply mystical, a communion with unseen forces, ancestral memory, and archetypal wisdom. I draw as much from the occult, dreamwork, and spiritual alchemy as I do from my physical materials. My art isn’t just inspired by these things; it’s made through them.

The studio becomes a sacred container. The page is an altar. My materials are spell ingredients. Symbols emerge like whispers. Archetypes show up in my dreams and then appear in my work. I marinate in every corner of these liminal spaces, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, until the art reveals itself.

This slow, chaptered unfolding is an offering, a way to honour the parts of my practice that often go unseen. The compost. The spellwork. The quiet why behind the what.
This winter, I’m letting the words do the heavy lifting and I’d love for you to walk this path with me.

So, light a candle. Pour yourself a cuppa. And join me each moon cycle as I write my way deeper into this practice.
Because sometimes, the most powerful creation happens when we are still.
When we let the fog settle.
When we honour the threshold as sacred.

✴︎ Witchy Little Things ✴︎

An Art Witch’s desk with a journal, candles, crystals and herbs

Resting at the Threshold

This season, I’ve been thinking a lot about thresholds, those in-between spaces that don’t quite belong to one thing or another. The doorway. The dusk. The inhale before the exhale. The moment when you're no longer who you were, but not yet who you're becoming.

Winter, in all her quiet wisdom, is a threshold. She invites us to step away from the noise, to sink into stillness, to listen. Not to fix or push or produce, but simply to be. That is not lazy. That is ritual.

When we choose to rest with intention, we reclaim something that capitalism has tried to steal from us, our rhythms, our softness, our right to pause. For those of us living with disability or chronic illness, this sacred pause is already embedded in our bones. We move with the tide. We honour the fog. But rest, when approached as a ritual, becomes something even more powerful: a spell of resistance, a threshold into deeper creativity, a homecoming to ourselves.

So, this month’s Witchy Little Things is all about resting at the threshold, finding magic in the stillness, the in-between, the quiet moments that hold everything.

Here’s how I’m working with this energy:

1. Thresholds Are Sacred
A threshold isn’t just a place, it’s a moment. When I moved from painting into writing this winter, I realised I wasn’t just changing mediums, I was crossing a threshold. These liminal spaces hold potent creative energy if we allow ourselves to pause and listen. You might be in one now. What are you crossing into? What are you leaving behind?

2. Rest as Ritual, Rest as Resistance
Build small, sensory rituals around your rest: a blanket you only use when reading tarot, a mug of herbal tea with a sprinkle of cinnamon, a playlist that signals “rest time” to your nervous system. These moments are sacred. Honour them as you would a spell.

3. The Dreaming Threshold
Dreams are threshold places too, where the conscious and subconscious meet. If you’re feeling disconnected from your creative flow, try resting with intention. Sleep with a crystal or herb bundle beside your bed, journal what arrives in the morning, or use a sigil to invite insight. The wisdom you’re seeking might be waiting in the quiet.

4. Crafting a Threshold Altar
Create a small altar or corner that holds your intentions as you rest. A candle for light, a feather for softness, a key for what you’re unlocking. This isn’t about aesthetics, it’s about energy. A place to hold what’s unfolding, gently, quietly, in its own time.

This winter, let rest be the ritual. Let the threshold be your teacher. Because sometimes the deepest magic happens when we stop trying to shape the world… and allow it to shape us.

✴︎ Artist of the Season: Johanna Warren ✴︎

Born: June 1, 1990 | Gemini Sun
Based in: Portland, Oregon
Mediums: Music, herbalism, ritual performance, healing arts

This season I’m honouring the deeply magical work of Johanna Warren, musician, witch, herbalist, and healer, as our Artist of the Season. Born under the sign of Gemini, Johanna’s music dances across realms: grief and joy, shadow and light, sacred and mundane. Her work feels like a whispered conversation at the edge of sleep, part lullaby, part invocation.

Johanna moves between worlds with ease, weaving music, plant medicine, energy work and ritual into one coherent offering. Her albums Gemini I and Gemini II embody the dual nature of the twins, not just as a concept but as an ongoing, lived experience, one of complexity, contradiction, and transformation. She describes these works as “emotional siblings,” made in response to deep inner reckoning and radical self-inquiry.

As an artist, she doesn’t shy away from pain. Instead, she crafts beauty from it, songs that feel like spells, lyrics that linger like the scent of burning herbs. She has also spoken openly about her path as a healer and witch, using creativity as both a cathartic release and an act of resistance. There’s something powerfully liminal about her work, like a doorway left ajar between worlds.

Her presence in the playlist this month is no accident, I’ve included a few of her songs that speak directly to this month's themes: rest, ritual, the sacred threshold, and the magic of in-between spaces. I hope they wrap around you like a blanket of moss and moonlight.

I hope you enjoy this month’s Winter Playlist, a little sonic spell to accompany your journal practice, your quiet afternoons, your moments of pause.

That’s a Wrap…

Thanks for curling up with this first edition of Monthly Musings, I’m so glad you’re here for the journey.

If you’re local, don’t forget: the Opening Night for the Creativa Exhibition is happening Friday May 30 at Kindred Cameras in Docklands. I’d love to see you there, come say hi, soak up the art, and maybe even take a crow (or two) home with you. There’ll be exclusive merch available from myself and other talented artists.

You can keep up with my studio life, witchy updates, and creative musings over on Instagram @angefosterart and Facebook at Ange’s Studio.

The New Moon astrology report is now live in this month’s Cycles of Craft update, you’ll find that over on Facebook, too.

And if you’re feeling the call to bring a little magic into your everyday, check out my Redbubble shop, browse prints, journals, and other enchanted goodies from the studio.

Until next moon, stay warm, stay inspired, and may your winter be filled with soft blankets, quiet magic, and creative sparks.

Some of the images in this post were created using AI. As a disabled artist living with chronic pain, I use AI tools to support my creative process when physical limitations make traditional methods difficult. It's one of the ways I continue to tell my stories, craft my magic, and share my world, accessibly, sustainably, and on my own terms.

Lammas: Honouring the First Harvest & Our Creative Cycles

Lammas - The First Harvest Festival

As we step into Lammas, the first of the harvest festivals, we reach a moment of reflection and gratitude for the creative seeds we’ve planted and nurtured over these past months. This is the time to honour both our artistic and personal growth, as well as the shifting cycles of the natural world.

The History of Lammas

Lammas, or Lughnasadh, is an ancient festival marking the first harvest of grain. Traditionally celebrated on February 1st–2nd in the Southern Hemisphere, it acknowledges the bounty of the land and the hard work that has gone into bringing the harvest to fruition. However, astrologically, Lammas falls halfway between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox, which in 2025 is on February 4th. Named after the Celtic god Lugh, a deity of craftsmanship and skill, this sabbat invites us to celebrate our own creative talents and recognize how far we’ve come on our journey.

Celebrating Lammas in the Southern Hemisphere

Living in the Southern Hemisphere, our experience of the Wheel of the Year is different from the Northern Hemisphere traditions often found in mainstream paganism. Here, Lammas coincides with the height of summer’s warmth beginning to wane, the first golden hints of autumn approaching, and a deep gratitude for the abundance that sustains us. It’s a time to slow down, reflect on what we’ve cultivated, and prepare for the shifting season ahead.

Ways to celebrate:

• Set up a Lammas altar: Decorate with sunflowers, Banksia flowers, and other seasonal flora. Include native fruits such as finger limes and Kakadu plums for an Australian touch.

• Colours of the season: Gold, orange, deep red, and earthy browns.

• Crystals for Lammas: Carnelian (passion and creativity), Citrine (abundance), Tiger’s Eye (grounding and strength).

• Herbs to work with: Native Australian bush herbs such as Lemon Myrtle (clarity and healing), Wattle (resilience and renewal), and Eucalyptus (cleansing and protection), along with traditional herbs like Rosemary (protection and remembrance), Basil (prosperity), and Chamomile (calm and success).

• Rituals & Offerings: Bake damper infused with native bush herbs as an offering of gratitude, create art inspired by the themes of harvest and transition, or write a list of your creative accomplishments since the Spring Equinox, when we planted the seeds of what we wanted to manifest.

A Lammas Altar.

Personal & Creative Reflections

Lammas invites us to reflect on our creative cycle, beginning back at the Spring Equinox when we set intentions, through Beltane where we ignited new ideas and passions, the Summer Solstice where we basked in their full light, and now at Lammas, where we harvest the wisdom gained along the way.

For me, this journey has been deeply tied to The Unseen Woman and the experience of exhibiting her at the Merri Bek Summer Show. This piece spoke to the visibility and invisibility of women’s lives—a theme that continues to weave itself through my work. Alongside this, I’ve expanded my practice, exploring watercolours more deeply and now beginning to experiment with Procreate and digital art.

Opening my Redbubble shop was a big step. This has been an exciting new way to share my art, allowing people to bring small pieces of my work into their daily lives.

I’ve also taken a significant step by preparing to apply for my first grant, a means to continue delving into the themes of the visible and invisible. These explorations remind me that our art, much like the cycles of nature, is constantly evolving, layering upon itself as we learn, shift, and grow.

I would love to hear some of your accomplishments during this cycle, please share with me over on the socials.

Honouring Women’s Stories: A Defiant Act of Feminism

One of the most powerful aspects of this cycle was taking part in the 101 Women Project, where we honoured the women killed by gendered violence in 2024. This work felt like an act of defiance, a reclamation of space for those whose voices were silenced. The ongoing cycle of remembrance, resistance, and renewal is more important than ever. We must fight for the rights that our grandmothers and mothers fought so hard for us to have. We cannot give up. We cannot let these rights be taken from us.

As Lammas teaches us, our work—whether creative, activist, or personal—is never in vain; it is part of a larger, ongoing cycle of remembrance, resistance, and renewal.

Embracing Texture & Layers: Experimenting for Creativa

Looking ahead, I am preparing for the Creativa exhibition with Collective 24, where I am focusing on layers and textures—both literal and metaphorical. This new exploration ties back to the very essence of Lammas: layering experiences, building upon past efforts, and refining our craft as we move forward.

Playing with Texture and Layers

Introducing #ArtWitchTips & #WitchyLittleThings

As part of the next phase of #CyclesOfCraft, I’m excited to introduce #ArtWitchTips and #WitchyLittleThings—practical, everyday tips for art witches. These will be small, actionable ways to bring magic into your creative practice, aligning your craft with the seasons, lunar cycles, and personal intentions. Stay tuned for more magical creativity!

#ArtWitchTips and #WitchyLittleThings

Lammas Art Journal Prompt

Lammas is a time of harvest, gratitude, and reflection. As we honour the first fruits of our labour, it’s also a time to ask: What have you created, nurtured, or learned since the Spring Equinox? What are you proud of? What do you wish to carry forward into the next season?

Art Journal Prompt: Create a page celebrating your personal harvest. Use warm, golden tones, layered textures, and symbols of abundance. Incorporate elements that represent your own creative journey—whether it’s words, images, or patterns that tell your story.

A Lammas Art Journal Page.

Additional Creative Offerings

As a special offering for this sabbat, I am releasing a free downloadable colouring page that aligns with the themes of Lammas. This is a small gift of creativity and reflection, an invitation to slow down and engage with the energy of the season through art.

Free Colouring Page for Lammas

Looking Ahead to Mabon & Aligning Art with the Season

As we move toward Mabon, the Autumn Equinox, we begin shifting our focus from outward expression to inward reflection. Just as the trees prepare to shed their leaves, we can ask ourselves: What do we need to release? What do we want to carry with us into the darker months ahead? How can we align our creative practice with the energy of this turning season?

Lammas is our moment to pause, celebrate, and express gratitude—not just for what we’ve created, but for the journey itself. The cycle continues, and with it, the ever-unfolding story of our craft, our art, and our lives.

#CyclesOfCraft is an ongoing exploration of creativity, nature, and the rhythms that shape us. As we embrace the harvest of Lammas, we prepare for the next season of change. What are you harvesting in your own life and creative practice right now? Let’s honour it together.