About

Bailey Silva paints from the inside of a wave. Her large-scale mixed media works begin underwater, in the disorientation of a wipeout, the filtered light on a reef, the gradient from blue to green to brown as whitewater settles. She calls this state Blue Mind, the mildly meditative calm that Wallace J. Nichols describes as water's reliable gift. Her paintings are an attempt to carry that feeling back to shore. Her approach draws on the visual language of Futurism and Cubism, reinterpreted through a liquid lens: not the machine or the figure, but the wave, seen from every dimension at once.

Silva's abstract style first emerged in 2018, when the Kīlauea eruption displaced her from her home and studio. Painting became a way to process impermanence, connection, and healing, themes that have anchored her practice ever since.

Her work has been featured at the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, CA, the Hawaiʻi Museum of Contemporary Art, and in publications including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She exhibits regularly; recent solo exhibitions include BlueMind at Kahilu Theatre and Under the Liquid Veil at the Wailoa Center. Her paintings are held in private collections internationally.

Silva holds a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Denver and a BFA in Communication Design from Metropolitan State University of Denver, and studied art history in Florence, Italy. She works across painting, murals, surface pattern design, and graphic design.

She lives in Kona with her family. Much of her work is made around nap schedules and early morning surf sessions, in a season where the water, the studio, and motherhood are built around tides and the particular grace of this moment.

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