Tidal Galaxy

Acrylic and Spray Paint on Canvas | 48×48 inches | 2020 | Divine Feminine

They slipped out after dark.

No one saw them go. No one was meant to. The house was quiet, the candles extinguished, the world that required them to be one thing — contained, silent, legible — safely asleep. And so they went to the water, the way women have always gone to the water when they needed to remember who they were before the world told them.

They could be Greek. They could be Roman. They could be three sisters from the Yorkshire moors whose names you know — whose books you have read, whose poetry changed the English language, who wrote in secret by firelight because the alternative was not writing at all. They could be any women from any century who understood that the night belonged to them in a way the day never quite did — that darkness was not danger but permission, that the water's edge was the one place where the rules of the daylight world lost their jurisdiction.

The fire burns. That particular amber warmth of a fire built not for warmth but for gathering — for the circle it creates, for the faces it illuminates, for the ancient human ritual of sitting together in the dark with light between you and saying the true things. One figure leans toward it with the unselfconscious abandon of a body finally allowed to be a body — loose, present, no longer performing anything for anyone. The other two stand at the water's edge, one turning back as though mid-sentence, mid-poem, mid-confession of the love she is not supposed to be having.

And the water. That extraordinary electric blue — the bioluminescent algae turning the tide into something that looks like the galaxy has come down to meet the sea, like the ocean has swallowed the Milky Way and is glowing from within with its own stolen starlight. The spray paint spatter of the night sky above — red and blue and green, the universe in full voice — mirrors the glow below, so that the women stand between two galaxies, earth and sky dissolved into the same luminous substance, the same ancient light.

This is the painting about everything women have ever done in secret. Every poem written under a brother's name. Every love conducted in letters burned afterward. Every true thought thought privately and never spoken. Every night stolen from the daylight self and taken to the water where no one could see and the fire made it safe and the bioluminescence made it magic and the stars made it infinite.

They slipped out after dark. And for one night, at the edge of the tidal galaxy, they were entirely, completely, magnificently free.

✦ Original, one-of-a-kind painting ✦ Acrylic and spray paint on canvas ✦ 48 × 48 inches ✦ Created 2020 ✦ Part of the Divine Feminine series ✦ Free worldwide shipping — ships rolled in a tube

Stretched Canvas Delivery For collectors who prefer to receive this work pre-stretched and ready to hang, please note that due to its exceptional scale, oversized freight shipping costs are at the client's expense. I'm happy to provide a freight quote tailored to your location — simply contact me before purchasing. Alternatively, your preferred art handler or framer can stretch the canvas locally upon arrival.

They slipped out after dark. The water was waiting.

Acrylic & spray paint on canvas