Essay by Millie Walton

Sheela na Gig forms part of Jamie Luoto’s ongoing investigation into the psychological aftermath of sexual trauma. The painting continues her exploration of the grief and anguish associated with such experiences, and how these emotions manifest physically – how trauma settles into the body, shapes perception, and continues to resonate long after the fact. The themes at work here – fragmentation, dissociation, intimacy, and embodiment – are central to her practice. But while earlier works have hinted at or depicted these experiences more overtly, Sheela na Gig presents a quieter, more ambiguous expression of pain, survival and connection.

The figure is at rest: her body is languid and soft, illuminated in dramatic chiaroscuro. Though she looks away passively – perhaps despondently – her pose is seemingly comfortable and knowing, one arm bent up behind her head, the other resting on her vulva. Her cheeks are flushed. Beside her crouches a black cat, a recurring presence in Luoto’s work, whose gaze meets our own – its right eye aligned with the figure’s, reinforcing the visual and psychic bond between them. The glint of a ring on the middle finger of her left hand deepens the connection. Luoto has frequently drawn on the language of witchcraft and paganism, not merely as aesthetic or symbolic devices, but as a means of reclaiming power, of forging alternative narratives for the self and the body. Here, the cat functions as both companion and guardian – witch and familiar.

Despite the figure’s vulnerability – her nakedness, turned-away gaze and bitten, bloody fingernails – there is a powerful sense of agency in the image. Her hand placement is ambiguous: suggestive of intimacy, perhaps masturbation, yet also a protective act, a boundary. The presence of worms elicits a visceral reaction, perhaps initially repulsion, as we imagine their proximity, feel and movement of their bodies on our own. Yet this sense of threat is purely sensory: worms are harmless creatures, vital to the regeneration of the natural world. Here, they might be read as a flaccid, perhaps redundant, phallic symbol; as an emblem of renewal; or more broadly as a metaphor for connection to the earth. The inclusion of lavender – renowned for its calming properties and potent scent – reinforces the suggestion of therapeutic practices while trails of menstrual blood evoke pain or grief, but also gestures toward natural cycles and the possibility of new beginnings.

Viewers often arrive at Luoto’s work with assumptions about what healing should look like – something linear, resolved, visible. Sheela na Gig pushes back against that narrative. The painting suggests that healing is non-linear, filled with contradiction, and deeply personal. For many survivors, healing is not about erasing what happened, but about learning to live with it – acknowledging both progress and pain, good days and bad. In this way, the work’s emotional openness, its rawness, is not evidence of harm, but of strength. Its confrontation is intentional.

This layered tension – between discomfort and beauty, exposure and control – is part of what gives Sheela na Gig its charge. The painting challenges cultural expectations of how the female nude should appear, feel or behave. Luoto’s work deliberately interrupts the art historical lineage of female nudes framed by male desire, presenting instead a body marked by lived experience and personal agency.

It is within this context that the reference to Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the World (1866) becomes relevant. Though Sheela na Gig borrows Courbet’s compositional perspective – the viewer is essentially positioned between the subject’s legs – the intention is fundamentally different. Where Courbet’s work is steeped in objectification and voyeurism, Luoto’s is self-aware and embodied. Her figure is not draped in secrecy or shielded by anonymity. This is a self-portrait. The full-frontal pose is self-assured rather than pornographic as well as a form of visual seduction, a way of drawing us into the image. However, the promise – or hope – of titillation is complicated by the presence of worms and tear-drop-like trails of blood. Have we intruded on a moment of intimacy? Or stumbled across some kind of ritual? Is this a private scene or a performative act? A drape of pale, pink silk hanging across the backdrop evokes the flesh and folds of the vulva but also acts as a kind of staging which may be for personal effect or in anticipation of an outside gaze.

The painting’s title refers to stone carvings of women with oversized vulvas that were found in churches and castles throughout Britain and Ireland. The meaning of these figures remains contested: some interpret them as fertility symbols, goddesses or guardians, placed over doorways and windows, others as cautionary emblems of sin. These opposing interpretations capture the tensions embedded within Luoto’s painting and the broader struggle for women when attempting to reclaim and assert their sexuality only to be called out as provocative or obscene.

This is not theoretical. Luoto’s work has repeatedly been flagged or removed on social media platforms – a modern form of censorship that disproportionately impacts women, particularly those who wish to speak openly about trauma, sex or the body. But in a sense this is the point of the painting: to provoke discussion around how we view, represent and understand the female body – not as an object, but as a site of memory, complexity and transformation.