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"Almost twenty years ago, I ran over a red racer snake on Old Pecos Trail. I was very sad. It was such a beautiful snake. I had never seen one, and the first one I saw, I ran over. I believe in animals appearing as signs in our lives. This encounter with the red racer feltsignificant. A beloved Jungian astrologer of Santa Fe, once told me “Bettina, give up on the idea of a white picket fence life, your life is about constant radical transformation.” My younger self did not want to hear this. I wanted to hear “you will find a partner, get married, and your lives together will unfold together.” This was not my path. Now that I am sixty, I am able to embrace this idea of constant transformation more easily. I have let go of a lot of ideas of what my life “should look like”, and been able to embrace the gifts of what it is. I started painting snakes back then, in different shapes and forms. I return often to this circular, ouroborus type shape. It is a soothing shape for me to paint. In a world full of so much difficulty and chaos, I like to create art that is a quiet place to return to. I want my paintings to remind you of a calm, peaceful place that exists in you, that is easy to lose touch with in this busy, challenging world.

They are a place to revisit, and recharge. The shape of the painting has evolved from a more

defined form as in Naga Uttanasana to the more recent, more diffused, abstracted Iridescent

Pink and Iridescent Yellow. The Iridescent pieces feel like they have to do with facing the

formlessness of the end of life. I have often been informed by the contemplation of what I

would want to look at when I am dying."

-Bettina Lancaster 2025

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“The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation

Process than we moderns so, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the

Ouroboros , the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a

Meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the

Thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was

Clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself.

The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite,

i.e. of the shadow. This ‘feedback’ process is at the same time a symbol of immortality

since it is said of the Ouroborus that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes

himself, and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the

clash of opposites….”

 -Carl Jung Collected Works

 Vol. 14 para. 513.