My OBT

What if you spent every day looking for One Beautiful Thing?

The Deep End

by 8 Comments

Calida Garcia Rawles

I recently read an amazing, heart-breaking first-person article by Jesmyn Ward in Vanity Fair. The moving piece is about love and loss and grief and COVID and civil unrest, and while I don’t feel equipped to talk about it, I strongly recommend you read it. Today, I’m writing about something much more in my wheelhouse, Calida Garcia Rawles, the painter whose image appeared at the top of the essay.

Incredibly, though the young artist has been painting for most of her life, she only got interested in the water when she began swimming lessons five years ago. Though she started swimming for the exercise, she found it was good for her mind as well as her body.

“I found that I felt emotionally lighter after leaving the pool, no matter what issues I was working out before I jumped into the water. This led me to begin using water as a visual language… a way to heal and address difficult and divisive issues. When I am in the water and I see the light glistening off of it in certain ways… it just looks so magical. The way the body appears to break, splinter, and flow in moving water appears other-worldly to me.”

– Calida Garcia Rawles

You can follow the remarkable Calida Garcia Rawles on her website and on Instagram.

View this post on Instagram

This piece was inspired by the beautifully-crafted words of Jesmyn Ward, “Witness and Respair,” featured in Vanity Fair’s groundbreaking September issue #thegreatfire __ As we navigate such a pivotal time, we’re also grappling with fear and loss…uncertainty. And though it might seem difficult, we must remain open to possibility. We have to believe that we’ll get to the other side. __ The opportunity to document this moment in history is an artist’s dream. I am grateful to Ta-Nehisi Coates for including me. And Jesmyn, I say ‘thank you’ for sharing. Link to her heartfelt words in my bio. _ Repost from @vanityfair • Novelist Jesmyn Ward lost her husband to “acute respiratory distress syndrome” in January. “Without his hold to drape around my shoulders, to shore me up, I sank into hot, wordless grief,” she writes.  In V.F.’s September issue, “The Great Fire,” Ward tells of loss and hope in a world beset by personal tragedy, a pandemic, and the murders of Black people at the hands of police. Read the full story at the link in bio.  Artist @calidagarciarawles, whose photo-realist paintings often focus on Black men and women submerged in water, created this artwork to accompany Ward’s essay.

A post shared by Calida Garcia Rawles (@calidagarciarawles) on

Author: Donna from MyOBT

I have committed to spending part of every day looking for at least one beautiful thing, and sharing what I find with you lovelies!

8 thoughts on “The Deep End”

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  1. yfaus
    September 15, 2020 at 6:58 am

    Stunning and emotionally moving paintings…and to get that kind of realism using acrylic is remarkable. Thank you OBT!!

    Liked by 1 person

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  2. bcparkison
    September 15, 2020 at 7:28 am

    She’s got it. Beautifully done and almost photo real.

    Liked by 1 person

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  3. janhaltn
    September 15, 2020 at 9:16 am

    I enjoyed looking at each a couple of times. It was interesting to know what the artist was attempting to accomplish with the paintings. I am not going to spend the money but I feel challenged to attempt to paint a ‘women of color’. Not sure I have the ability to do it even if my hands were young again. Hal

    Liked by 1 person

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  4. Laura (PA Pict)
    September 15, 2020 at 3:34 pm

    Wow! If you had not informed me otherwise, I would have completely assumed these were beautiful photographs. The ability to capture the way the light plays on the water, the way the water distorts the human figure, and the rendering of the skin tones is all very impressive.

    Liked by 1 person

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