48W x 72H" 

Oil on canvas 

"Ascension and a Smoldering Heart" situates a vase of flowers within both a physical and metaphorical pit of hell. Resting on a sharp-edged red marble slab, the vessel stands upon a foundation shaped by rupture and emotional extremity. The slab’s hardness and geometric severity contrast with the organic fragility of the flowers above, emphasizing a condition of psychic collapse rather than stability.

The bouquet functions as an aggregate form: most flowers are bowed or withdrawn, their downward orientation suggesting grief, exhaustion, and the gravitational pull of loss. One flower rises closer to the rim, marking a fragile awareness of survival rather than recovery. Jagged stems and sharp leaves accompany this ascent, signaling that growth is neither gentle nor unguarded, but shaped by resistance and self-protection.

Butterflies introduce fleeting moments of relational support, while an angelic form behind the vase signals emergence rather than rescue—faith generated from despair itself. Skulls receding into the darkness beneath the angel ground transcendence in mortality rather than escape.

At the edge of the slab, a smoldering heart rests on a precarious plate. Separated from the body, damaged yet alive, it becomes the work’s ethical center—poised between irreversible descent and the quiet insistence on continued life.

- Forrest Gearheard