Grief Seance: Disjecta Membra - Original Painting

Measuring 18x24 inches, painted 140lb cold-pressed paper, fused to a birchwood panel with a depth of 1 inch. Painted with gouache, inks and chalk pencil and finished with a protective satin varnish. The panel itself is stained a deep emerald, to match the piece, and is ready to hang with or without framing. Payment planning available with inquiry.

About the piece:
Grief Seance was painted after a call for participation in a show by the same name at Parts Peculiar Gallery in San Francisco. Below you can read a statement I wrote about the piece.

On “Grief Seance:Disjecta Membra”

Disjecta membra—Latin for “scattered fragments”—evokes images of broken poetry, splintered manuscripts, or ancient pottery shards. The phrase, derived from Horace’s disiecti membra poetae, serves as a poignant metaphor for grief: the moment loss shatters us and leaves us piecing together what remains. While grief is known as a process, it often crystallizes in memory as a singular, irreversible instant—inevitable, yet somehow unexpected. This painting reflects that paradox, exploring how loss reshapes us into something unrecognizably new.

Pottery, fragile and elemental, embodies impermanence. Born from earth, fired into form, it is destined to break. Here, the negative space between shards trace the human nervous system—a deliberate echo of recent studies showing how profound loss rewires our bodies, lending credence to the idea of a “broken heart.” This work contemplates the mourning not just of what we’ve lost, but of the self we leave behind in that fractured, frozen moment when grief finds us.