The Dharma Darling
44 paintings on the lessons that turn difficulty into direction
Acrylic on canvas, 50 × 60 cm · Begun spring 2026
44 paintings on the hero's path, from the shadowed ground of inherited patterns to the clear, sovereign light of one's own dharma.
The word comes from a Sanskrit root meaning "to hold" or "to support." It names the order that holds a life together and, in the Indian traditions, svadharma: the calling that belongs to each of us alone.
Each canvas is built in what I call Imaginal Symbolism: a way of painting I've followed by instinct since 2011, letting archetypal figures surface and putting them directly onto canvas. I found the name for it only in 2024, in philosopher Henry Corbin's mundus imaginalis — a world with its own reality, where symbols act — which described exactly what I'd already been doing. The golden woman, the pomegranate, insects and birds, exotic plants, rivers, oceans and celestial bodies recur across the series, and each enacts the change it stands for.
The whole series follows one alchemy of resilience: the passage through fertile darkness into a joy that has been fully earned, from heavy mud to the lotus that could never have opened in its full royal beauty without growing through it.
The project began in the spring of 2026. New work is added as it's finished.
Purple Moon, acrylic on canvas, 50x60 cm
Sanctuary, acrylic and gold leaf on canvas, 50x60 cm
Rare Bird, acrylic on canvas, 50x60 cm
Jaguars and Persimmons, acrylic on canvas, 50x60 cm
Be there when the next painting is finished
A letter goes out each time a new painting is born: the finished canvas, notes from the making, and the diary fragments behind it. There's no schedule, because the paintings don't keep one. Join Uslada on her Dharma Darling journey.