Saudade • 54x80"
Saudade • 54x80"
Dimensions: 54”H x 80”W x 1.5”D
Medium: Acrylic on gallery wrap canvas
Additional Info: Sides of canvas are painted • Original, one-of-a-kind painting • No reproductions or prints
About the Artwork: Saudade explores the Portuguese concept of longing and melancholy that exists alongside tenderness and memory. Created in the wake of personal loss, this painting became both a sanctuary and a reckoning – a space to process the complexities of emotional recovery.
Light and shadow weave through the layered composition, neither overpowering the other. This interplay mirrors the nonlinear nature of healing, where moments of clarity emerge, recede, and resurface. The textured surface reflects life’s emotional terrain – complicated, contradictory, and deeply human.
This work stands in quiet resistance to curated perfection. In a culture that often favors filtered narratives, Saudade invites viewers to embrace beauty in the full range of experience – the peaks and the valleys, the stillness and the weight.
Each brushstroke holds a moment of presence, a visual affirmation that light and darkness can – and often do – coexist. In witnessing this layered field, I hope viewers find space to honor their own emotional landscapes with honesty and grace.
The title for this painting is the Portuguese sentiment that refers to a "deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. It is an emotional state that can evoke happiness, excitement, and pleasure for something that has happened while simultaneously cause sadness and suffering knowing it will never happen again." I am attracted to this paradoxical idea of experiencing happiness and sadness at the same time.