Miryam Welbourne is an abstract expressionist painter and clinical psychologist. She received her doctorate from Yeshiva University in 2012. During her graduate studies, she developed a technique called “Projective Abstraction,” which integrates her theoretical training in psychodynamic and psychological testing with fine art tools and abstract expressionist processes.
Welbourne is a self-taught artist and works outside of commercial art markets and gallery spaces. Her body of work includes abstract expressionist paintings of various sizes, large-scale murals, live performance, video art and animation.
Her performances incorporate elements such as lights, choreography, costumes, video projection, collaborations with local musicians, and high-speed painting. They are theatrical events serving as a metaphor for ideas related to Jungian concepts about projection, shadow, our shared unconcsious and the Self.
Prior to the October 7 attacks, Welbourne’s work was influenced by her spiritual, religious, and mystical encounters with the universe. While her themes encompass images of Pieta, Greek mythology, and various cultures' origin stories, her work never directly addressed her own Jewish faith.
As the daughter of a Colombian Ashkenazi mother, she is a first-generation American Jew. Her ancestors were refugees who dispersed across South America and Israel under threat of Eastern Eurpoean anti-semitism. Her mother, raised in a small Jewish community in Bogotá, immigrated to America, where Welbourne was born and raised in the Reform Jewish tradition. As a child, she attended High Holiday services and completed a Bat Mitzvah and Confirmation. She stopped attending synagogue after leaving home at 17.
The shock and trauma of the Simchat Torah pogrom on October seventh profoundly impacted her once unwavering belief in existential unity, leading to a crisis of faith. In response, she sought spiritual guidance from the Rabbi in her community. A meeting that brought her comfort and inspiration to return to the Torah. Then, while listening to a reading of the daily chumash, she would discover Leviticus 9:1 :
"On the eighth day, Moses summoned Aaron, his sons and the elders of Israel..."
And with this verse, an introduction to a world beyond the 7th. The eighth: A place and time beyond our world, a direct connection in acts of shared creation. The eighth.
The current collection, Leviticus is a document of the process Welbourne undertook in search of an eighth day. It consists of eight canvases, cycled and painted over and over again for eight months. A reformation of an identity that had been broken off, dismissed- filled with pain and anger: through paint, evolved and redeemed in portraits, past and present, of defiance; hope through communion, and a renewed faith in the human Self.
The work was exhibited at Adath Israel Synagogue in Middletown, CT, and ran from November 10th to December 10th, 2024.
Pictured below:
"Shemini Cherubim: For Felix" 5' x 4 1/2', ink, acrylic and latex. 11/2024
with Felix Iannuzzi and Allen Silberstein at Adath Israel in Middletown, CT. 11/10/2024.
