November 4, 2026 · @Stephanie Visser
Here is a painting I made in 2021. Look at it for a moment before you read on.
Between Heaven and Earth Series : It Never Rains in Southern California | Mixed Media Acrylic 60 × 45 on canvas.
What do you see?
I see a bouquet. Red blossoms, yellow green stems, a dark vase below.
The painting is called "It Never Rains in Southern California". I was finishing it in the studio in the middle of a real storm. It was dark, palm trees were dropping branches everywhere, and cars were trying to get up the street. There was nothing to see but their red tail lights, and I painted that.
A few weeks ago I was working on my big new canvas and I tried something I had never done on purpose. I looked at my own work for inspiration, printed a detail of this painting and played with it on paper, looking for ideas about composition. At some point I turned the printout a quarter turn.
And there was a figure. A ghostly one, wearing a hat. Off to the right, a smaller red shape that I think is another person, standing further away.
Same marks. Same paint. I did not add a thing. Upright it is red tail lights in the dark, or a bouquet, depending on who is looking. Turned a quarter turn it is a person.
That first time I was looking at a crop. This time I turned the entire painting, so nothing is cut away. The figure is still there.
Between Heaven and Earth Series : It Never Rains in Southern California | Mixed Media Acrylic 45 × 60 on canvas.
Since then I have been turning everything I make, and I see figures everywhere. Had I been turning my paintings all along, this may have been the direction I chose to finalize, along with a few compositional changes. Not because of the figure, but because of the preferred composition. As it stands I love the original. This potential direction is something I have been grappling with in the studio. The storm was real, and so was the experience. The figure is real, and so is the experience of it.
Here is what has changed for me. For a long time I wondered whether I was meant to say something with the figures. Now I can walk away from that question. They are already there. My job is to paint, and then let everyone see what they see. Including me.
We see what we see based on our own history, our predilections and our imagination. If you need to see a whale or a dolphin, you will. If you need flowers, you will. People or pets, you will. And what you see brings meaning with it. For you.
What a gift, or a burden. Personally, I get a great deal of comfort from it, like a message or a poke from the universe, or heaven as you may call it.
A neuroscientist would call these images of faces or animals or nature pareidolia. I was raised around people who would call it something else. I will leave that one open.
I never give the figures names. I have learned to leave them alone. And when you look at my work, what you see is what you need, even if I didn't paint it. I will agree with you and let you take the gift of abstraction for yourself.
So here is my invitation. Take one of your own photos, or one of your own paintings, and turn it a quarter turn tonight. Tell me what looks back.