Online Talk · Alchemy of a Blackbird: Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, Tarot and the Making of a Novel with Author Claire McMillan

Monday, July 19, 2027
7pm ET (NYC time)

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When novelist Claire McMillan encountered Remedios Varo’s otherworldly painting The Call, she found herself drawn to learn everything she could about the painter who made it. As she did, McMillan’s own decade-long tarot practice began to dove-tail with Varo’s interests in tarot and other esoteric practices. That synergy became the starting point for McMillan’s novel Alchemy of a Blackbird.

The artists Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington each fled war torn Europe for Mexico City and formed a uniquely collaborative friendship. Grounded in creation—and a shared fascination with worlds beyond the strictly rational—the friends drew upon tarot, alchemy, Kabbalah, Russian mysticism, and other esoteric traditions to create powerful art work.

In this illustrated talk, McMillan will trace the journey from artistic obsession to historical research to fiction, exploring how Varo and Carrington’s lives and work shaped the imaginative world of her novel. She’ll discuss the challenges and freedom of writing about real historical figures, the role tarot came to play in the novel’s structure and storytelling, and the ways friendship, transformation, art, and the esoteric became intertwined in the writing process.

McMillan will also look at what happened after the novel was finished. Alchemy of a Blackbird has now inspired a major group exhibition of the same name at moCa Cleveland, which she is co-curating and is set to open April 2, 2027. The exhibition will bring Varo and Carrington into dialogue with contemporary artists working across drawing, sculpture, painting, installation, and interdisciplinary media.

The exhibition also completes a cycle for McMillan that began with seeing a painting and circled from image to story, and from story, back into art.

Claire McMillan is the author of three novels, most recently Alchemy of a Blackbird, which explores the lives and friendship of Surrealist artists Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington in 1940s Mexico City. Her previous novels are The Necklace and Gilded Age. McMillan is currently co-curating Alchemy of a Blackbird, a major group exhibition inspired by her novel, opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art (moCa) Cleveland in 2027. Bringing together historical and contemporary works by more than fifteen artists, the exhibition places Varo and Carrington in dialogue with artists including Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Kim Krans, Julie Schenkelberg, Jesse Bransford, and Jackie Tileston, exploring tarot, mysticism, transformation, friendship, and intuitive approaches to artistic practice. McMillan’s work is interested in the intersections of art, history, the esoteric, and women’s autonomy. She lives in Cleveland, Ohio.