Katabasis is an ancient Greek term meaning "going down." In classical literature and mythology (like the journeys of Orpheus or Odysseus), it refers to a living person taking a literal or physical descent into the Underworld or the realm of the dead and returning to access a deeper level of consciousness or connect with ancestors.

In Mary Ramsden’s work, this becomes a passage into the space of feeling: a place where sensation precedes language and consciousness is experienced through the body. The painting holds a sense of movement and suspension, as though something is unfolding beneath its surface, asking us to attend not to a fixed image but to the feeling of what happens within it.