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Paintings from 2025

This collection of paintings are created to explore brightness, color, and the imaginative phantoms who reside in spaces I have traveled where both the mundane and the sublime can be recognized. 

Pantheon

Here time is condensed into fiery revolution. The altar borders a figure now deified, her moth wings signal new worship and transmutation. Moth as transitory traveller balancing realms of light and dark, a winged spirit shining with the heated iridescence of sunset.  

 

Square boxes bronze coated and lacquered, tables float against nebulous black, divinity removed from shapes confused in their dimmed environment.

Here time is condensed into fiery revolution. The altar borders a figure now deified, her moth wings signal new worship and transmutation. Moth as transitory traveller balancing  realms of light and dark, a winged spirit shining with the heated iridescence of sunset.  

Square boxes bronze coated and lacquered, tables float against nebulous black, divinity removed from shapes confused in their dimmed environment.

Cabbit of Venice

Inspired by the city of Venice, this piece recollects images nestled between crevices of aged indigo architecture. 

Conjured as seraph harkening the striated symmetry of ceiling patterned vaults and impressive arches. 

A venetian doll performs on the mind’s stage of vaulted dreams.

Arnquist_Bella_Cabbit_of_Venice.jpg

Rainbow Under the Moon

Moongaze with rainbow gravity, golden-masked faces peek through glass windows.

The dreamer sits in her own creative making, shapes and striped patterns evoking the sunlit memories of childhood.

Arnquist_Bella_Rainbow_under_the_Moon.jpg

Altar of the Desert

Altar of the Desert represents the energetic excitement and joyous exclamation of memories and the places and objects that hold them. The centralized ladder portrays a vibrant altar of desert flowers and sun worshiping forms, and the swirling patterns create a sensation of movement.

This illustrated dance of layered patterns and shapes evokes the alchemical process of colors enriched and shaped in Ceremonies of fire and dance. 

Arnquist_Bella_Altar_of_the_Desert.jpg

Garden Lamps Amidst the Leaves

Here we see the little rose garden situated in the round center of Old town Orange. 

In the gentle light of dusk the twin rose’s petals shine golden and noble in their tranquility. Behind leaves uncoiled and unfurled sits the fountain, offering relief to the parched throats of garden animals.  

Arnquist_Bella_Garden_Lamps_Amidst_the_Leaves.jpg

Internet Birthday

Shapes glow in the dark and in Night’s wet palpitancy 

Light waves are digitized in video night florescence, 

phosphorescence of the Computer’s light.

Veridian aqua forests reminiscent of the nightworld beyond a bedroom window. 

Popup window hyperdream

Birthday wishes shared online, memories accentuated with early software of computer games and oversaturated birthday parties.

birthday(new).jpg

Nesting Under the Fallen Sequoia 

Plant Bodies wake in summer haze amongst dappled ferns and fauna.

 Wood and earth protect new growth ultimately acting as forest guardians.

A small creek darkening with heavy shadow, we contemplate who might live in the sunken shadows of the forest’s crevices.

Arnquist_Bella_Nesting_under_the_Fallen_Sequoia.jpg

Shadows of the Mirror-body

Foot and shadow follow one another through Manzanita branches red and skinned, the California Quail inhabiting the space as natural iconographic symbols of the California landscape. 

 Stripes as laceration and shadows drawn and patterned upon flesh and fabric. Inspired  by the god Xipe totec’s striped flesh which regenerates, this piece contemplates the shedding of skin, feather, and bark as renewal practices of animal and earth.

Shadows_of_the_Mirror-body.jpg

Graffiti Astrology

This piece celebrates downtown Los Angeles, the graffiti symbols, the plastered papers full of faces, and the neon window signs conveying the chaotic red electricity of a city.  The Composite shark-dog figure shares a similar constitution with  the city of Los Angeles: part land and part sea.

Mysteries of the astrological, like graffiti, only decipherable by the initiate.

Arnquist_Bella_Graffiti_Astrology.jpg

Paintings from my time at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design

made from 2019-2023, I created many paintings to delve and comprehend my own processes, problem solving, technical studies, stylistic preferences, influences, and my own painting philosophies. 

Market Place in Waking Light

This piece explores the Meadow as a marketplace, where it is layered in symbiotic and life-death exchanges. Beacon of decay and restoration, centralized cellular heart, the regenerative rebirth and redeath centered amidst nature’s floor. 

Marketplace in Waking Light

Reincarnation

This piece illuminates channels to our fractalized and fractured self, the magical potential of mental creation. Reincarnation is seen here as spiral, stories collapsing into entropy. The cyclical rotations of reincarnation and divine repetition appear, complete with the vessels of framed scenes and the different acts portrayed.

Arnquist_Bella_Reincarnation.jpg

Quaking Bog

This piece was painted in Minneapolis using the plein-air process and depicts a bog in the early morning light. The dramatization of light and reflection further accentuates the connectivity of sky and water. The usage of impressionistic techniques captures the visceral sensations of observing and being in nature. 

quaking bog.jpg
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