Life underwater (left, middle, right) by Isis A//fourtoeight

Life Underwater is the largest artwork I've created up to date. This is the left panel out of a three-panel piece included in the Life Underwater Collection, which belongs in the Dark Surrealism #2 series, a set of paintings that conjure the metaphor of subsurface emotions as what lies under the ebb and flow of experience.

Isis A//fourtoeight

Life underwater (left, middle, right)

Acrylics and gouache on gesso treated panel

Signature: All my paintings are signed with my name and end year of the creation process.

Life Underwater is a storytelling piece comprised by three parts. Each one of them can have an isolated reading, however, when put together, a more complex underwater tale unveils.

The scene is located underwater, its characters being marine creatures, merfolk for the most part, symbolising the captivating attraction towards perilous events. Located to the right, two mermaids are secretly interacting, in a clear show of complicity while hidden from the rest, behind a throne where a larger merman, a depiction of Glaucus, takes the place of a divine entity. The middle panel connects the events happening on each of the edge pieces: three mermaid surrounded by a variety of sea animals, or simply animals that happen be in the sea, out of which a couple of ferret-looking black creatures on the top stand out, emerging from behind Glaucus' throne, are shown looking to the left, sending off a fourth one, holding on to octopi while she seems to be gleefully departing.

On a rather personal note, this painting is a visual construct on a delusional attempt to reimagine the heartbreak I was going through that moment, to see it differently, kind of like the emerging of myself and fulfilment of my dreams. My mind was eager to assign crucial roles to strangers I was interacting with, through the internet, in what could have otherwise been regarded as a distraction from a draining process of dettachment. This painting is a representation of how I saw myself back then and how I thought of those people, to whom I felt emotionally connected at different levels, not because I was, but because I needed that feeling to dilute any other that would keep me drowned deep into despair.

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From Isis A//fourtoeight

Baby Skull with Teddy Bears

Acrylic and gouache on gesso treated panel

35.43 x 35.43 x 0.39 in
Rennard and the Eels

Acrylics and gouache on gesso treated panel

31 x 39 x 0.39 in
In the Flood

Acrylics and gouache on gesso treated panel

39 x 31 x 0.39 in
Girl with Alternative Hades Pet

Acrylics and gouache on gesso treated panel

39 x 31 x 0.39 in
Alone in The Bathroom #1

Acrylic on gesso treated panel

35.43 x 19.7 x 0.4 in
Beyond the Looking Glass (left and right)

Acrylic and gouache on gesso treated panel

39.37 x 63 x 0.4 in
Pizza Flower

acrylics on recycled vynil and wood

15.75 x 7.87 x 0.5 in
Girl Underwater

Acrylic and gouache on gesso treated panel

View All Artworks

Additional Details

Additional Artworks

Baby Skull with Teddy Bears

Rennard and the Eels

In the Flood

Girl with Alternative Hades Pet

Alone in The Bathroom #1

Beyond the Looking Glass (left and right)

Pizza Flower

Girl Underwater