Acrylic, Photo Collage and Resin on Wood Panel | 18×24 inches | 7/8" Deep | 2023 | Nudibranch Series
They have personalities.
This is the discovery that changes everything about how you see nudibranchs — and Nudi Pastel is the painting that makes it impossible to unsee. Look at them. Really look. The white rabbit nudibranch dead centre, its pale ears raised, its blue face wearing an expression of such serene, slightly bemused dignity that it looks like a character from a Studio Ghibli film who has wandered into the wrong ocean and is entirely fine with that. The orange and brown leopard print nudibranch strutting across the middle ground with the confidence of someone who has never once doubted their outfit. The tiny yellow spotted creature bottom centre, so round and so earnest it looks like it is trying very hard at something and succeeding completely. The blue and white chromodoris gliding through the upper right with the effortless elegance of the class president. The rust red spiky one bottom right, all attitude and texture, the punk of the group.
Twenty creatures. Twenty personalities. Twenty tiny manga heroes assembled in the same pastel ocean, each one distinct, each one extraordinary, each one behaving with the particular comic earnestness of an animé character who takes their role in the story completely seriously even though the story is set in a children's picture book.
The background is the artist's inner child, given permission and paint.
Every colour chosen was a favourite — the mint green that lives at the centre of childhood summers, the hot pink of birthday balloons and candy wrappers, the soft yellow of the first box of crayons, the turquoise of a swimming pool seen from underwater on a hot day. Applied in generous, body-rich acrylic with real physical presence — not flat, not thin, but substantial and textured — the background doesn't just support the creatures. It celebrates them. It says — yes, you belong here, in this world of colour and joy and the particular frequency of happiness that children access naturally and adults have to remember their way back to.
This is what the Nudibranch series has been building toward all along — the discovery that these creatures are not just visually extraordinary but genuinely, irresistibly, almost unbearably cute. That the ocean has been making its own cast of manga characters for four hundred million years. That nudibranch is the perfect name for them — adorable and slightly ridiculous and completely wonderful — and that to spend time with them, really spend time, is to feel something loosen in your chest that has been too tight for too long.
The artist tapped into her inner child to make this painting. The inner child, it turns out, had been waiting patiently and had very strong opinions about colours.
Created in richly layered acrylic with hand-applied body paint, individual photographic collage elements precisely placed, and a final layer of high-gloss resin that gives every creature the luminous, jewel-like quality of something glimpsed through the glass wall of the world's most beautiful aquarium.
✦ Original, one-of-a-kind work ✦ Acrylic, photo collage and resin on wood panel ✦ 18 × 24 inches | 7/8" deep ✦ Unframed — ready to hang ✦ 2023 ✦ Part of the Nudibranch series ✦ Free worldwide shipping ✦ $3,200
Twenty creatures. Twenty personalities. One very happy inner child.
Acrylic, Photo Collage and Resin on Wood Panel | 18×24 inches | 7/8" Deep | 2023 | Nudibranch Series
They have personalities.
This is the discovery that changes everything about how you see nudibranchs — and Nudi Pastel is the painting that makes it impossible to unsee. Look at them. Really look. The white rabbit nudibranch dead centre, its pale ears raised, its blue face wearing an expression of such serene, slightly bemused dignity that it looks like a character from a Studio Ghibli film who has wandered into the wrong ocean and is entirely fine with that. The orange and brown leopard print nudibranch strutting across the middle ground with the confidence of someone who has never once doubted their outfit. The tiny yellow spotted creature bottom centre, so round and so earnest it looks like it is trying very hard at something and succeeding completely. The blue and white chromodoris gliding through the upper right with the effortless elegance of the class president. The rust red spiky one bottom right, all attitude and texture, the punk of the group.
Twenty creatures. Twenty personalities. Twenty tiny manga heroes assembled in the same pastel ocean, each one distinct, each one extraordinary, each one behaving with the particular comic earnestness of an animé character who takes their role in the story completely seriously even though the story is set in a children's picture book.
The background is the artist's inner child, given permission and paint.
Every colour chosen was a favourite — the mint green that lives at the centre of childhood summers, the hot pink of birthday balloons and candy wrappers, the soft yellow of the first box of crayons, the turquoise of a swimming pool seen from underwater on a hot day. Applied in generous, body-rich acrylic with real physical presence — not flat, not thin, but substantial and textured — the background doesn't just support the creatures. It celebrates them. It says — yes, you belong here, in this world of colour and joy and the particular frequency of happiness that children access naturally and adults have to remember their way back to.
This is what the Nudibranch series has been building toward all along — the discovery that these creatures are not just visually extraordinary but genuinely, irresistibly, almost unbearably cute. That the ocean has been making its own cast of manga characters for four hundred million years. That nudibranch is the perfect name for them — adorable and slightly ridiculous and completely wonderful — and that to spend time with them, really spend time, is to feel something loosen in your chest that has been too tight for too long.
The artist tapped into her inner child to make this painting. The inner child, it turns out, had been waiting patiently and had very strong opinions about colours.
Created in richly layered acrylic with hand-applied body paint, individual photographic collage elements precisely placed, and a final layer of high-gloss resin that gives every creature the luminous, jewel-like quality of something glimpsed through the glass wall of the world's most beautiful aquarium.
✦ Original, one-of-a-kind work ✦ Acrylic, photo collage and resin on wood panel ✦ 18 × 24 inches | 7/8" deep ✦ Unframed — ready to hang ✦ 2023 ✦ Part of the Nudibranch series ✦ Free worldwide shipping ✦ $3,200
Twenty creatures. Twenty personalities. One very happy inner child.
