Fish Beneath Blue Sky

Where the Water Holds Us explores themes of femininity, transformation, and emotional depth through a series of large-scale figurative paintings and intimate mermaid works. Throughout the collection, Brittany Ferns is drawn to a palette of deep ultramarines, sea greens, and shadowed indigos, allowing the color blue to shape the emotional atmosphere of the work. Departing from the warmer earth tones that characterized earlier paintings, this body of work embraces a quieter, more contemplative visual language. Ferns’ figures inhabit spaces suspended between land and water, rest and movement, emergence and surrender. Mermaid forms recur throughout the collection as symbols of intuition, transition, and the fluid states of being that accompany a woman’s journey through life. Some figures appear to surface, while others drift or dissolve into their surroundings, reflecting the experience of existing between versions of oneself.

Drawing on folk imagery, memory, ritual, and coastal symbolism, Ferns explores femininity through simplified forms, elongated bodies, and richly layered surfaces. The paintings embrace softness and imperfection, creating space for vulnerability, intuition, and emotional presence to emerge. Occupying liminal spaces between certainty and change, sinking and resurfacing, holding and letting go, the figures embody the complexities of transformation and self-discovery. Where the Water Holds Us marks a significant evolution in Ferns’ practice, reflecting a move toward larger-scale works and a deeper engagement with atmosphere, color, and symbolic space.