Rising Through Color Layers

Rising (2022) is a painting about emergence — about the quiet, relentless act of lifting oneself out of heaviness. At 100 x 80 inches, it’s one of the most expansive works in The Pulse of Life Collection, created to hold the sensation of ascent, not as triumph, but as motion.

The canvas opens from the bottom in layers of shadow — deep indigo, dusk gray, hints of violet — before giving way to warm coral, golden light, and airy whites. The colors don’t leap; they rise. Gently. Persistently. As if drawn upward by some invisible will.

This painting was created in the wake of exhaustion — physical, emotional, collective. It felt like everything was heavy, and yet something inside still wanted to lift. Rising is that urge. Not to escape, but to move toward light.

The gesture recalls the vertical energy found in Mark Rothko’s softer later works, though here the transition is more textured, less diffused. My aim was to express verticality not through symbols, but through atmosphere — through the sensation of gravity being slowly reversed.

There’s no climax in Rising, no clear resolution. Just a progression. A soft insistence. A layered motion from shadow toward spaciousness. It feels like breath after holding. Like remembering how to feel again.

As part of The Pulse of Life Collection, this painting is an offering for the in-between states — not quite broken, not yet whole, but moving.