Marcelina Amelia – Cowgirls Sabbath: A ritual of reclamation, softness, and strength.

We sat down with artist Marcelina Amelia to dive deeper into the story behind her new exclusive originals collection with Print Club London.

Titled Cowgirls Sabbath, the series explores identity, transformation, and soft power through a deeply personal, folkloric lens. Before we get into the full interview, Marcelina shares the inspiration behind the collection in her own words…

Cowgirls Sabbath is a collection of intimate paintings reimagining the Western archetype through a personal, Eastern European lens. Created around the Summer Solstice, a season of expansion and transformation, the work draws on childhood play, ancestral memory, and feminist folklore.

The cowgirl here is no mythic lone ranger. She’s a shapeshifter: barefoot in spurs, radically soft, emotionally defiant. She carries trauma, empathy, and sisterhood. Her strength is in how she listens, how she survives. The headscarf under her cowboy hat nods to Polish tradition, a symbol of spiritual protection and sacred transition, becoming a kind of armour, binding past and present.

Motifs like straw, often seen as a marker of rural naïveté, are reclaimed as a badge of origin a raw thread connecting us to land, labour, and survival.

This series is a private ceremony. A soft rebellion. Inspired by Mary Oliver’s The Journey, the work asks: What would you do if no one was watching?

What can you tell us about the inspirations behind this new collection?

Cowgirls Sabbath was born around the time of the Summer Solstice, a moment of ritual, sunlight, and quiet transformation. The cowgirl archetype began to surface in my imagination, but I didn’t see her as the dusty, gun-slinging figure from Western films. I began reimagining her through a distinctly Eastern European and feminine lens: barefoot but in spurs, wounded but unbroken, emotionally defiant. I was thinking a lot about softness as power, about rural iconography, about the headscarf (chustka) as both protection and symbolism. The collection draws on childhood dress-up, Slavic folklore, ancestral memory, and the quiet strength of sisterhood. It became a kind of ritual for me, a way to embody freedom and unlearn old narratives.

How do acrylic, monoprint, and watercolor on Khadi handmade paper influence the look and feel of your work?

The materials are central to how these works come alive. I use both Khadi handmade paper and Bockingford each chosen for their richly textured, almost rug-like surfaces. They hold pigment in unpredictable ways, absorbing and resisting just enough to leave behind beautiful traces, edges, and ghost marks. That tactility feels essential. It echoes the rawness of the themes I’m exploring: femininity, ancestry, survival, softness.

In this series, I worked with a monoprinting process where I paint directly onto a gelli plate and pull a single odbitka (impression) from it. Because you only get one shot, it invites spontaneity and imperfection. These papers respond beautifully to that they catch the subtle textures, smudges, and overlaps that make each piece feel alive.

After the print is pulled, I sometimes return with acrylics or watercolour, layering more pigment by hand. This back-and-forth between printing and painting brings the work depth and dimensionality. The softness of watercolour contrasts with the thicker gestures of acrylic, and the paper grounds it all like a woven foundation holding emotion, gesture, and story in one place.

Why did you choose Khadi paper and this specific size for the pieces?

 I love how tactile Khadi paper is. It feels alive. It’s made from recycled cotton rags, which aligns with the themes of reuse, ancestry, and craft. The uneven deckled edges remind me of ancient manuscripts or sacred pages, which suits the idea of these works as a kind of visual gospel. The intimate size invites closeness. You have to lean in. It feels like a whisper rather than a shout, and I wanted that kind of intimacy with the viewer, like you’re entering a private ritual.

What mood or story are you hoping to convey through these artworks and collections?

I think of the series as a soft rebellion. There’s a quiet strength in these figures, a sense of crossing thresholds, letting go of imposed roles, and reclaiming emotional truth. The works speak of transformation, survival, embodiment. They ask: What would you do if no one was watching? It’s about freedom not through dominance but through tenderness. The mood sits somewhere between dreamscape and folklore, a little surreal, a little sacred.

Is there a personal meaning behind this collection you’d like to share?

Yes. This series feels like a coming home to parts of myself I had to quiet for years. Growing up between cultures and identities, I often felt I had to assimilate or shrink. This collection is about shedding that. It’s a tribute to the part of me that once dressed up in scarves and boots and photographed myself becoming someone else, long before I called it art. It’s also deeply connected to my matrilineal line, the headscarf as protector, the straw as symbol, the land as witness. It’s personal, but it’s also collective.

Do you approach creating prints differently than when you make original works?

In this series I’ve been experimenting with monoprinting, specifically by painting directly onto a gelli plate and making a single odbitka (impression) from it. Unlike traditional printmaking which often aims to produce editions, this process results in a one-off image each time. I approached it much like painting, but the surface and method pushed me to loosen up. Painting on the plate doesn’t allow for too much detail or correction. It invites spontaneity and chance, which made the process feel more playful and less pressured. There’s always that little thrill when you lift the paper and discover what transferred.

Some of the works are partly monoprinted, while others are only hand-painted, layering acrylics or watercolor on top. That combination gives the pieces a kind of texture and depth I love. It allows me to shift between control and surrender, between planning and accident. It’s become a very exciting way for me to work, intuitive, open, and full of moments where magic just happens.