Seven Levels of Invisibility is an exhibition by Naomi Bishop exploring the seven stages of alchemy through a series of large-scale semi-abstract paintings and detailed works on paper.
Drawing on early medieval texts and imagery, Naomi investigates the processes of transformation, purification and renewal, bringing ancient alchemical concepts into a contemporary visual context.
Artist statement
An exhibition of paintings exploring the alchemical process, informed by early medieval texts, marginalia and imagery, ciphers of the arcane, and the esoteric.
The painted panels are also guided and formed by the processes of painting. Pigments are found, gathered, ground, combined, distilled, diluted, oxidised and cured. Painting becomes its own form of alchemical magic.
Stage 1: In medieval alchemy, Calcination is the first stage and describes the process of burning an object to purify and reduce it to ashes.
Stage 2: Next is dissolution, which involves placing the ash into water to dissolve and create a solution from the two materials, ash and water.
Stage 3: The solution is left to slowly separate. As impurities sink to the bottom, the liquid clarifies. The ash and water are then combined again and begin to form a new material.
Stage 4: Through the processes of fermentation and distillation, the matter is purified and perfected.
Stage 5: Finally, the base material (lead) is transformed and becomes a noble material (gold) through the process of transmutation.
Stage 6: The paintings move through the colour spectrum, from the volatile darkness of black and grey, through distant blues, indigo, cerulean and copper, violet and green, yellow and magenta.
Stage 7: In the final panel, the colour wheel is incorporated inside a gilded sphere, representing the creation of the whole, or noble element.
Image credit: Naomi Bishop, Dissolution (detail), painting, 2026. Image courtesy of the artist.
