The Keeper

Above the water is the world we know well. It is familiar and full of frustration, anger, sadness, joy, elation, excitement, fear, and so much more. It feels solid, until everything changes and the foundation beneath us seems to warp and pull away, leaving us hanging and waiting, held up by our cherished memories, darkest desires, and most immense fears.

Beneath the surface is another world: quiet, strange, where time moves differently and memories and dreams do not always remain where you put them. And between these two worlds runs a river.

No one remembers when the river first appeared. Some say it has always been there while others believe it was created the first time someone dreamed a dream they weren’t ready to make come true. The boundary between these worlds is where the Keeper lives.

She didn’t choose the role. She was once a regular woman who found herself standing at the edge of the water looking down into a world that seemed to know her. She could see things beneath the surface that weren’t visible to anyone else; fragments of memories, forgotten dreams, wishes never spoken aloud, and fears bundled up so tight they could barely take a breath.

And then she saw the koi. They moved through the water with a certainty, travelling between the worlds as though the boundary didn’t exist and they seemed to know something she didn’t, and so she followed them.

She dove into the water without hesitation, breaking the surface with the tips of her fingers and feeling the cool water wash over her as she sank deeper and deeper into the blue.

The deeper she went, the less certain she became of where one world ended and the other began. The water carried pieces of the past with it, like little paper boats being whirled and washed in mini underwater tornadoes. Memories surfaced and disappeared again. Faces in those memories changed. What was once familiar seemed to morph into the strangest of things, and the foreign sights began to feel like home.

She began to understand why she had been lured here. The two worlds were never meant to be separate. There are pieces from each world that need to find their way into the other. Memories need to be remembered. Dreams need to be realized. Fears need to be faced. Parts of ourselves that we leave behind without realizing we had. Someone needs to care for them.

Someone has to keep the passage open for us.

So she became the Keeper.

She learned to live in the cold and lonely space between the worlds, never really belonging to either one. She watches the water and follows the koi. She welcomes the new memories and says farewell to the ones going home. She gathers what rises from below and decides when they are ready to pass between worlds.

Being the keeper comes with a cost, though.

The longer she remains between the worlds, the more difficult it becomes to remember where she came from. The boundary that once seemed so clear begins to disappear and when she peers through to the world above the water, the edges are blurred and she begins to lose sight of what she used to gaze at day after day.

Perhaps her true purpose was never to choose one world over the other but to understand that both need to exist at once.

The water continues to move between them, and the koi continue their journey.

The keeper remains at the threshold, watching and remembering, waiting for what comes next.

The Keeper No. 1

Watercolour and Mixed Media on Paper

10"x14"

2025

The Keeper No. 4

Watercolour and Mixed Media on Paper

12"x18"

2026

The Keeper is a surreal exploration of identity and my personal journey with memory, grief, and anxiety in the throes of loss.

At the center of the series is a character, The Keeper, who exists between two worlds. She is accompanied by koi that move through the water around her, becoming companions and guides. In some works, the koi are close enough to feel like an extension of her, while in others they are connected to her in other ways. There is a responsibility, and the threads that connect her to the koi are a symbol of our connections to the people, places, memories and experiences that we carry with us.

Memory is a central theme in this series, and in this imagined world. In one painting, the Keeper is surrounded by polaroid-like fragments of photographs that face and melt around her. These images represent the imperfect nature of remembering. Memories can feel tangible and vivid, and objects like photographs, letters, and personal belongings reinforce this for us. But these memories we hold in our heads are constantly changing, fading and distorting over time. We hold onto certain moments while others slip beyond our reach.

When creating this series, my intention was to follow a bit of my own experiences and memories and play with the feelings I had while creating the work, rather than obsessing over the result and the intended meaning coming through a specific way. As this series progresses, the boundary between the Keeper and the world she inhabits becomes less distinct, and as I continue to add to this series the exploration of the role of the Keeper keeps evolving.

The water in the series represents a lot for me. I grew up without any swimming experience and quite a lot of fear around it. As I grew older, and with the help of my mother who was an avid lover of all things water, I grew an attachment to water, both watching it and experiencing being in it.

For me, water, swimming, and the feeling of being submerged in cool water are peaceful and associated so strongly with the brighter memories from my childhood. Combining these feelings with the feelings I was struggling with at the beginning, this series has helped me create a series that feels personal with a strong narrative element that allows me to tell the story in a surreal and magical way.

Through this series, I am interested in ways we hold onto memories, dreams, fears, and desires, and how we essentially store them until we are ready to use or “deal” with them. And for everyone, this can look very different, but I believe the Keeper is a part of all of us, in a more abstract kind of way. The Keeper is ultimately a story about attachment, transformation, and caring for the most treasured parts of us deep inside, until we are ready to introduce those parts back into the world, in whatever form that may be.

This is an evolving series.