Glowing Roots Grimoire — Creative Research and Experimentation

 

Introduction

My grimoires are not created as finished art objects from the outset. They are working books that grow through research, experimentation, and use, and are completed over time.

They are not intended as spiritual manuals for rituals or spells per se. I use the word ‘grimoire’ in a personal, interspiritual way — as a poetic container for creative practice and research — while honoring that the term carries different meanings in other contexts and traditions.

Originally intended as: a sketchbook for life drawing and observation
Working title: Sketchbook 2001
Within the grimoire ecosystem: intuitive transformation, visual reflection, and existential writing layered over long-term observation
Artist: Rika Dehombreux
Year: 2001 - ongoing : The book is still in progress but as a grimoire now

From categorization to coherence

For many years, I struggled with categorizing my creative work. I kept separate sketchbooks, art journals, glue books, research notebooks, color studies, and technique experiments. Each book had a purpose, a rule, a label. In theory, this structure was meant to help me focus.

In practice, it did the opposite.

I would move from one interest to another — from mythology to color, from drawing to collage, from observation to imagination — and each shift seemed to require a new book. The result was a growing collection of half-filled notebooks and a persistent sense of fragmentation. I was always beginning, rarely completing, and constantly questioning where something truly belonged.

Over time, I realized that the problem was not a lack of discipline, but a mismatch between rigid systems and how my mind naturally works.

Originally intended as: an extended binder to hold experimental works too large for a regular format
Working title: Large Works Binder
Within the grimoire ecosystem: associative collage, dimensional experimentation, and fairy-tale symbolism exploring the power of storytelling
Artist: Rika Dehombreux
Year: 2011 - 2021 (completed): Glowing Roots Grimoire (2011–2021), Experimental Collage, Art and Soul, by Rika Dehombreux

The freedom to experiment and research

My creative process is exploratory by nature. I research, experiment, follow questions, abandon them for a while, and return later with new insight. I jump between subjects, techniques, images, and ideas. This is not chaos — it is how curiosity unfolds for me.

Once I stopped trying to force my work into fixed categories, a different structure emerged. Instead of separating everything, I began gathering it.

Drawing, collage, writing, symbolism, color tests, notes, references, observations, and failed experiments all started to coexist within a single book. That book became what I now call a grimoire.

In this sense, the grimoire is not about mastery or control. It is a space where experimentation is allowed, where research can remain visible, and where unfinished thoughts are not a problem but a record of thinking-in-motion.

Originally intended as: a handmade art journal for intuitive painting
Working title: The Big Purple Book
Within the grimoire ecosystem: intuitive painting, poetic repetition, and visual mantra allowing meaning to return and deepen over time
Artist: Rika Dehombreux
Year: 2014 – ongoing: The book is still in progress but as a grimoire now

The mad professor and the eternal student

I sometimes think of my grimoire practice as that of a gentle mad professor — someone who cannot stay with one subject long enough to exhaust it, because the world keeps offering new questions.

I am also, very deliberately, an eternal student.

The grimoire allows me to move freely between disciplines and interests without needing to dedicate one book to one theme. A single grimoire may contain mythological notes beside a color experiment, a careful observation next to a playful collage, a serious question followed by a moment of wonder.

Nothing needs to be resolved immediately. The grimoire holds contradictions, detours, and returns.

Originally intended as: a sketchbook for realistic drawing practice and study
Working title: Realistic Drawing Practice Sketchbook
Within the grimoire ecosystem: observational study dissolving into fantastical imagery, symbolic intuition, and reflection on non-linear time
Artist: Rika Dehombreux
Year: 2020 - dismantled: The book has been dismantled in 2025 and the works have been included in a grimoire in progress now

Completion without pressure

Although my grimoires begin as working books, they are meant to be completed.

Each one starts with a provisional or working title. Only after the book has reached its natural conclusion does it receive its permanent name and subtitle. This moment marks not perfection, but coherence — the point at which the grimoire reveals its own inner logic and personality.

I refer to these books collectively as my Glowing Roots Grimoires.

Each completed volume carries the name:

Glowing Roots Grimoire
by Rika Dehombreux
Subtitle (revealed after completion)

This naming system allows the work to unfold without premature definition, while still honoring completion, authorship, and intention.

Originally intended as: a glue book
Working title: Glue Book
Within the grimoire ecosystem: story seed, image-based storytelling, and poetic writing emerging from intuitive artwork
Artist: Rika Dehombreux
Year: 2019–2021 (completed): Glowing Roots Grimoire (2019–2021), Collage as Sentiment and Story as Seed, by Rika Dehombreux

A record of becoming

More than anything, my grimoires are records of becoming.

They document how ideas grow, how questions change, how research feeds imagination, and how making by hand leads to understanding that cannot always be planned or explained. They are neither purely private nor created for immediate display. They exist in the space between process and form.

By gathering my work into grimoires, I no longer need to choose between intuition and structure, or between research and play. The grimoire holds both — quietly, patiently, and over time.

Some of these magical books also appear in flip-throughs and process videos on my YouTube channel — Rika Dehombreux →