Heidi Taillefer brings her machines to Zaventem

If you play Corruptor, you have spent whole games looking at her work. Heidi Taillefer painted that avatar and nineteen more Sorcery cards across Arthurian Legends and Gothic. She is at Quartier Papier for Siege at the Core on Saturday and Sunday, signing cards at the artist tables.

Her paintings sit somewhere between an anatomy plate and a machine diagram. The dove on Peace Offering has a body built from white segments, and one wing strung like a harp. Easy to miss at first glance, and hard to unsee once you have spotted it.

It started with Terminator

The machines go back a long way. On her own website, she tells it like this:

I was also taken by clockwork mechanisms which I found around my home, but the pinnacle of this fascination came in the mid 80’s when so many classic science-fiction movies came out. To me, the ultimate was Terminator, featuring a skeletal cyborg that combined the beauty of the human skeleton with a mechanism. That is where I found the initial inspiration for my work.

Note the word beauty. Even her first paintings were less about cold metal than about what lives inside it:

My work consisted of watercolour robots featuring animals and people, which were a commentary on the effects of human interaction with the earth.

Three decades on, the animals are still there. In Arthurian Legends, four of them have wings. Five, if the Boggart rolls Airborne.

The human inside the machine

In a short text she gave us, she explains what the machines are for, and where Sorcery fits in:

My biomechanical art reflects the ubiquity of technology throughout the world, and our increasing merger with it. It focuses on the rapid evolution of technology while we remain entrenched in an eternal human condition that will never change. My fine artwork has been exhibited worldwide in gallery and museum shows, as well as through illustration projects from Sorcery trading cards to art cars for the Cirque du Soleil. Although my work is usually biomechanical, there have been occasionally more traditional depictions of subjects for Gothic Sorcery especially, mostly because of the requirements of an image. This does not mean I am changing styles however, and this will appear in future cards for the game, so stay tuned!

That Gothic remark is easy to check. Corruptor is a Gothic card, and there is not a single gear or clockwork in it: a faceless hooded figure, and behind it a crowd of horned shadows. Put it next to any of her Arthurian birds and you have both sides of her on one table.

Twenty cards and a small flock

She has been painting for Sorcery since 2024: twelve cards in Gothic, with Corruptor, Peace Offering, Guardian Angel, Jack the Ripper, Sea Witch, Sjaelström, Begone!, and five more, and eight in Arthurian Legends. Four of those eight are two knights, a lion, and a boggart: Sir Gareth, Sir Tristan, Monstrous Lion, and Ribble Boggart. The other four are birds, and they are worth a closer look.

Grain Sparrow, Thieving Magpie, Redbreast Robin, and Ominous Owl: one bird for each element.

On paper they are the same card four times: a 1-cost, 1-power Airborne Ordinary Beast, one each for Earth, Fire, Water, and Air. What changes is the job, and she painted the job into the bird.

Grain Sparrow (Earth) has Genesis: gain 2 life. It flies in carrying ears of wheat, its body bound in twine like a sheaf, while three women gather the harvest below.

Redbreast Robin (Fire) deals 1 damage to every other unit at its site at the end of your turn. The robin stands on a branch next to a nest of burning twigs, one wing raised, with its red breast painted like a dotted metal plate.

Thieving Magpie (Water) can pick up carried artifacts that cost 1 or less. Its breast is a cluster of pearls, its wings are panelled with lace, and it already has an earring and a pendant in its claws.

Ominous Owl (Air) lets you cast minions to its site. It sits on a branch holding a scroll covered in runes, which is about as good a picture of “send for reinforcements” as a card gets.

Look closely and none of the four is only feathers. The sparrow is bound in twine, the robin is plated, the magpie is threaded with pearls and lace, and even the owl’s feathers are laid out like a weave.

On her site, she closes her story with an invitation that works just as well across a signing table:

I invite you to take a closer look at my work and see if you can decipher any given work’s meaning for yourself or come up with your interpretation to match what you see.

Bring along your cards. She is signing both days.

Meet Heidi at Siege

Heidi is at the artist tables on Saturday and Sunday to sign your cards.

Find more of her work at heiditaillefer.com and on her artist page on sorcerytcg.com: sorcerytcg.com/art/heidi-taillefer, and she is on Instagram as @heiditaillefer.

Bringing a stack of birds but no ticket yet? Sign up for Siege at the Core first.