Luminous Ascension

8x24

mediums/materials: phosphorescent paints, found objects, paper, wax, photo collage, oxidative inks, distress paint and inks, acrylic pouring, digitally altered images, acrylic paint, watercolor, spray paint, walnut ink, staining mediums, tissue paper, mica powders, glitter, heavy gel medium, gesso, pebeo prism and fantasy paints, ceramic paint, stained glass paint, alcohol inks, iridescent inks, distress crayons, charcoal, pastels, oil pastels, string, beads, jewelry, gems, chains, buttons, foils, newspaper, vinyl, plastic, walnut inks, india ink, colorshift paints and more!

The clouds represent sanctuary—not escape as abandonment, but escape as survival. The layered textures of turquoise, gold, and rust create multiple planes of existence occupying the same space, suggesting that wonder and brutality coexist, but the child has learned to float toward one and away from the other. The light breaking through isn't divine intervention but the child's natural state: radiant, permeable, still believing. The obscured features suggest universality—this is every child, every soul before it learns limitation. The garden-like quality of the background hints at Eden before the fall, but it's not a place; it's a way of seeing. The child sits rather than stands, suggesting contemplation, patience, presence. This isn't frantic escape but deliberate ascension. The soul knows where to go when the world becomes too much: up, where nothing can shade it, where magic still lives because belief hasn't died yet.

Luminous Ascension explores the psychological terrain between the seen and the unseen — a meditation on emotion, memory, and the fragile thresholds of identity. The work invites contemplation of inner landscapes and the quiet movement of thought beneath form.

Before the world taught us to see less, we sat on clouds and called it ordinary. We breathed light through our skin the way adults breathe disappointment— naturally, without question. Someone will say your head is in the clouds as if that's where you've gotten lost. But maybe you've just remembered how to rise above the ugliness, how to float where sorrow hasn't learned your name yet. Children see the shimmer in the air between things, the splendor we decided to call nothing. They walk between worlds we convinced ourselves were separate, touch the membrane of magic and don't flinch when it touches back. Up here, above everything, the soul stays unshaded. Free as a bird, they say, as if freedom were flight and not this: sitting still in a place darkness can't climb to, where wonder isn't work but the only way to breathe. We grow up and call it wisdom— learning to see only what hurts less. But the child knows: there are layers to reality, and we chose to live in the heaviest one.