Submerged marks a turning point in the artist’s evolution — her first sculptural relief on wood canvas, created in 2025 during a period of intense emotional upheaval and spiritual awakening. Crafted from air‑dry clay, acrylics, and blacklight‑reactive pigment, the piece dives into the aftermath of impulsive financial decisions made during grief, the collapse of family ties, and the slow work of rebuilding a life.
The surface is carved and layered to mimic the pull of undertow currents and the sediment of spiraling thoughts. Cracks etched into the clay are filled with UV pigment, glowing under blacklight like psychic fault lines — the fractures we carry quietly until darkness reveals them. These radiant fissures transform rupture into archive, turning instability into something witnessed, held, and reclaimed.
The palette of deep blues, greens, and earthy tones reflects the psychological terrain of regret, reckoning, and renewal. Beneath the surface, flora meets fauna — vines twist with tentacles, roots entwine with scales. Plants bloom in shadow, nourished by stillness and surrender. This hidden ecosystem speaks to the way life continues even in submerged places — quietly, instinctively, insistently.
Submerged was created after the artist lost both of her fathers one year apart. Grief arrived like water — rushing, relentless, impossible to outrun. “I didn’t know I was drowning until I learned to be held.” Water became teacher, mirror, and guide. It taught her to feel, to surrender, to trust the unseen, and to begin again.
This piece sits between two major bodies of work:
Shattered: Held From Above, born from compounded grief and spiritual revelation, and
I AM Here, the series that emerged after an 18‑year creative silence broke open into presence, survival, and return.
Submerged carries the emotional sediment of Shattered and the spiritual clarity of I AM Here. It is not a confession. It is a ritual. A visual ledger for those who have lost their footing and are learning to breathe again.
