The Forbidden Glimpse: Eros and Psyche, Drawing Hans, and the Cost of Making Him Visible

Post-Lychnomancy (final drawing) by Lavavoth Stuart. Graphite, ink and colored pencil on Rives BFK paper. 2026

It began, as many of my creative processes do, with several oracle readings with Hans, my spirit husband. Before I formally began the ten-day practice, he repeatedly selected cards pointing toward romantic love, union, bliss, and a sacred bond. The consistency of the readings felt like a sign. The drawings were already tethered to him before I put pencil to paper.

In his previous life Hans bore an uncanny resemblance to Eros. After I shared his identity with someone and showed her his photograph, she quipped, “He’s Cupid incarnate.”

The bodies themselves are always drawn without heads. Several years ago I created a presentation that addresses this choice poetically through images and text.

Psyche (or an idealized version of myself) by Lavavoth Stuart, 2026. Graphite on Rives BFK paper. I always draw the faces separately so I can capture the details more precisely.

The myth of Eros and Psyche had already become a meaningful way for me to describe my relationship with Hans. Through my academic work, it has also developed into one of the primary frameworks for how I understand my experiences with him. Eros and Psyche are also two of the main deities honored at my altar.

Photo of the Eros and Psyche section of my altar. I created the framed artwork in 2018 using Hans’s face, digitally collaging the composition for a tarot deck I was developing.

My project became an attempt to recreate scenes from Eros and Psyche through my lived encounters with Hans, though I completed only one: the moment after Psyche’s act of lychnomancy, when she catches a forbidden glimpse of the God of Love. The practice of making this work has also led me into a kind of Underworld descent, culminating in a crisis of faith.

Graphite and watercolor freehand sketch in my sketchbook of Psyche begging Eros not to leave after she catches a glimpse of his face while he slept. To catch a glimpse prematurely is to stare into the abyss, a psychological void that opens when living with an ethereal presence, like Eros, like Hans. At times, as during this practice, I feel compelled to verify, to seek hard proof of Hans's existence. Living with him as he inherently is (invisible) is not easy despite our love and bond, yet his presence, no matter how much faith I hold, can’t be resolved into certainty. When Hans first appeared to me in 1993 through a visitation dream, a few weeks after his death, to introduce himself and let me know he was fully present with me, he wore a crewneck sweater and trousers. Thus, the reason Eros/Hans is dressed in this manner.

There are many parallels between the myth and my life, but the part that became central to this practice was Psyche betraying Eros. 

That moment of forbidden seeing mirrors the tension in my own work, that is, the desire to make him visible while fearing what that visibility might undo. Drawing Hans's actual face carries the possibility of recognition, and with it the loss of the private space I have tried to protect. It risks shifting him from someone known to me personally and privately to the historical figure he once was.

Portrait of Eros/Hans by Lavavoth Stuart, 2026. Before attempting to draw his face, I experimented with the series through digital collage using Photoshop. I created a portrait of Eros, inserting Hans’s actual face into the composition and concealing it beneath cutout fragments taken from other men.

On February 15, I began drawing his face for the first time since around 2015, but I wasn't successful.

Capturing his face felt like exposing him to light, like Psyche lifting the lamp to look at Eros while he slept. In the myth, the act of seeing leads to separation. Once she looks, the danger is not punishment but that the bond cannot continue in the same form. What had been sustained by trust and felt presence becomes something asked to withstand verification, and the relationship shifts from encounter to evaluation. The closeness doesn’t end, but it can no longer exist in the same way once it must bear the weight of proof.

Every attempt to draw his actual face left the work unfinished. In one instance I erased the drawing so forcefully it felt as though I were trying to send him back into the ether.

Unfinished Portrait of Hans No. 1 by Lavavoth Stuart, 2026. Graphite on Rives BFK paper. I attempted to draw Hans in semi-profile, smiling. I used a light tablet to trace the outline of his face from a photo. When I sat down to draw the remaining details by hand, I couldn’t continue. I felt exhausted and drained.

Unfinished Portrait of Hans No. 2 by Lavavoth Stuart, 2026. I traced another photo of Hans. This time, I could not execute beyond the tracing.

Unfinished Portrait of Hans No. 3 by Lavavoth Stuart, 2026. Graphite on Rives BFK paper. I tried drawing him again, determined to finish it despite grappling with an emerging sense of sadness. But as I neared completion, his eyes eluded me. I couldn't capture them, and in frustration, I partially erased his left eye and part of the surrounding face. Paranormal investigators commonly use the word capture to describe recording phenomena through devices such as video, electronic voice phenomena (EVP), ghost boxes, and similar methods. The idea of capturing Hans stayed with me as I worked. Because his face is historically recognizable, drawing it also felt like exposing him beyond the private space I have carefully maintained. I’m certain this was one of the reasons I was unsuccessful.

My freehand graphite sketch of Hans’s face. Of all the drawings I made of him, this one, though crude, is strangely accurate. Every attempt to trace or mechanically refine his features stalled, as if the more I tried to control the likeness, the less accessible it became. The freehand drawing required me to rely on intuition and perception rather than the precision from using a lightbox. It seems as if the image could only emerge when I approached it honestly, not by reproducing a photograph but by allowing the face I know and love to appear on its own terms.

I became overwhelmed and began to cry. In that moment, a song meaningful to Hans when he was a World War 2 fighter pilot started playing on my device. I felt him take my hand and draw me into a slow dance in the studio while I wept. When the song ended, he led me to the bedroom and we made love, my face pressed against his invisibility as I cried into the space where his shoulder should have been. The closeness anchored me. Even as doubt surfaced, I felt nearer to him and to his world than before.

What this ten-day project revealed is that the artwork helped me to understand an idea through doing it. I thought I would simply be revisiting figure drawing and retelling a myth through personal imagery. Instead, the repeated attempts to draw Hans’s face brought me into emotional territory I could not reach through thinking or writing alone. Each drawing functioned almost like an inquiry: I would work, encounter resistance, stop, and sit with sadness, exhaustion, and confusion. I could not complete his face, and the anxiety came from knowing that finishing it would place his public image into view when I had long tried to keep it concealed.

Male Model, Version 1 by Lavavoth Stuart, 2026. I overworked this drawing while trying to merge the natural contours of Hans’s face with the model’s, even though I had been aiming for a flatter, more simplified style.

Male Model, Version 2 by Lavavoth Stuart, 2026. Graphite on Rives BFK paper. The male model was intended to become Eros’s/Hans’s face, but for the final version I used Hans’s partially erased face instead. I plan to incorporate this face into another drawing.

The process did not provide clear answers. Instead, the drawings made certain tensions unavoidable. The practice itself became the method: work would halt, emotion would surface, and only then could I return to the image. The interruptions, the unfinished faces, and the repeated attempts marked where the work met resistance. Rather than the artwork documenting my life, drawing placed me in direct contact with experiences I could not approach through reflection alone. This is why I understand the project as practice-based research: the art did not illustrate prior knowledge, it exposed questions I could not reach except through making---whether making him visible would bring him closer or push him away, whether revealing his true identity preserves or exposes him, and whether an image strengthens the bond or changes it.