Amelia Rozear

Amelia Rozear

Amelia Rozear, also known as Mia, is a young illustrator from Connecticut, who has always been very fond of creative and mystical things. As an illustrator, she tries to tell stories wherever she can, through any medium possible. Watercolor is especially close to her heart. Her interest in tarot began when she discovered the artwork of Pamela Colman Smith, illustrator of the traditional Rider-Waite Tarot deck. When the quarantine of 2020 drove the world into lockdown, she decided to explore tarot further by creating a deck of her own. She currently resides in Providence, Rhode Island with two small rabbits, Soup and Meatball.

Her friends and she have always been interested in creative and mystical things. Her friend Charlotte introduced her to tarot in high school. "Some artists make their own decks,” Charlotte told her, “it’s a crazy project to take on, there are 78 cards.” The thought of a project of that scale excited her, and Charlotte’s words kept rolling around in her mind for years. As her friends and she delved deeper into reading tarot, her interest accelerated, and she began researching the history and symbolism around the Rider-Waite deck. A project this intense deserved her complete attention, which wasn't possible as a full-time college student. When the 2020 quarantine drove the world into lockdown, she realized this was the window of opportunity she needed to start.

Arthur Waite, co-creator of the traditional Rider-Waite deck and author of Key to the Tarot, describes tarot as an art form that “embodies symbolical presentations of universal ideas, behind which lie all the implicits of the human mind”. She filled an entire sketchbook with notes as she studied his writings, completely enthralled by the little stories he described within each card. She decided that in her own deck, she would try and retell these stories through her own contemporary artistic language.